You know you should be better organized as a small business owner. Having accounting tips for organizing receipts and bills can be particularly helpful when struggling with cash flows month to month. Maybe your tax preparer gives you a dirty look when you bring them your “shoebox” of receipts each year. You might be comingling your personal and business accounts and now you are struggling going through your bank statements trying to remember everything you spent on the business.
Most of the time you are so busy growing your business that these key processes of organizing, managing, and analyzing your financial information get pushed to the side. This also means clarity gets pushed to the side. Having timely and accurate information is the cornerstone for making timely and useful decisions. With effective accounting tips, organizing receipts and bills becomes easier and more straightforward.
Luckily, there are easy things you can do today that can make your life easier. Here are four different options you can use with progressive levels of automation. Following these accounting tips for organizing receipts and bills will streamline your process significantly.
1. Set up a secure folder in a repository like Google Drive or Dropbox and use your phone to snap pictures of receipts and bills.
You can put the folder link right on your phone homepage. Many use a form of OCR (optical character recognition) to help you properly name the file for ease of understanding.
Pro: Very quick and easy.
Con: Will need to take extra steps to get into your accounting system.
2. Use embedded tools within Quickbooks Online or Xero to quickly upload receipts to your accounting system.
You can use their apps to snap pictures and categorize line items where they need to go.
Pro: Still fairly quick. Gets your information directly into the accounting system and attaches the supporting documentation for accounting and audit support.
Con: Requires a little more time and thought than just adding a picture to a folder. You will need a minimal understanding of your accounting system to make sure everything gets to the right place.
3. Use a more advanced tool like Hubdoc to enter receipts and bills.
These types of applications integrate with your accounting system and use some form of OCR and pattern recognition to help you more quickly book items.
Pro: Takes the built in apps in your accounting software a step further. Pattern recognition can automate a good amount of your expense side bookkeeping.
Con: Learning curve up-front. Some interfaces may be “clunky” for some time.
Check out Hubdoc here: https://www.hubdoc.com/
4. Move towards full AI automation with tools like Makershub.
This moves beyond simple OCR into full large-language model analysis of your receipts and bills. Once set up it has the power to pull thousands of lines of detail and add it to the accounting system correctly in seconds.
Pro: Once set up it can handle large volumes of data in an extremely accurate way.
Con: More costly and more complex learning curve.
Check out Makershub here: https://makershub.ai/
It doesn’t matter where you fall on this spectrum. The important point is to move towards continual improvement. Your mind will thank you, your tax pro will thank you, and your business will be better off.
Need help with your financial tech stack implementation? Our team at High Impact CPA is ready to help. Visit our site to learn more or book a Discovery Call.
