Organizing your receipts:Receipt reader from Push Accounting & Receipts by Wave

Jane Veldhoven for Streamline Your Stuff / Herald Homes writes: Receipts in your wallet, shoved in your pocket, loose in your purse, on the kitchen counter, littered all over your desk? I had a nice young lady stop me in a parking lot one day, when she saw the sign on my van, asking me what to do with her receipts. Perhaps your receipts runneth over as well, so here are a few ideas for keeping them organized.

First of all, ask yourself why you need the receipt at all? Maybe you can tell the store not to give it to you in the first place. Then ask yourself what type of easy organizational system you can set up to get the receipts out of the pocket and the purse and into some kind of container.

For some of my clients that means taking all the receipts out at the end of a week and shoving them in a grocery bag that gets left on the floor for “later.” That’s a system, right?

Well, sort of, but perhaps not a very good one because you actually haven’t dealt with them and when you eventually do it’s going to be extra painful.

I want you to avoid pain, so first designate a section in your wallet where you can keep all of the receipts for the week stored nice and flat. If you have business expenses, have one section for business and one for personal.

At the end of every week, take them out and sort them. By the end of a week chances are you don’t need any of the grocery or dry cleaning receipts.

Recycle or shred those immediately. You’re left with clothing and gas receipts, maybe some business receipts, and other major purchases. If you’ve worn the clothing, discard the receipt. If you don’t use your vehicle for business, discard the gas receipts. Keep the receipts for major purchases for as long as the warranty is valid or as long as you think you’ll need to refer back to them.

The easiest thing to do with those receipts is either to staple them to the warranty and file in your warranty box or file them with the appropriate credit card or bank statements. Chances are you will never need them so don’t spend a lot of time organizing them.

I know, I know, there are those of you who are totally paranoid about discarding any type of receipt “just in case” you need it someday. So, you guessed it, there’s an app for that.

The first option is the very nifty Neat Receipts Scanner. Scan any receipt or document up to 14” x 30” and the technology in the scanner will read and understand key information and file the receipts for you. There is a mobile cloud service available for iOS devices and Android phones. If you have a backlog of receipts this could be a little slow as it only scans three or four receipts per minute.

Receipt reader from Push Accounting (www.pushaccounting.com) sounds excellent. Reviews say it’s one of the best for accurately converting the data to digital format. Simply snap a picture of the receipt with your phone and the software will do the rest. The smart receipt app will pull out information (vendor, date, category, amount, tax, etc.) from the receipt and process it to your Push account where you can view all of your receipts and even print reports. Super useful if you travel for business. Starts at $10 per month.

Or try Receipts by Wave (www.waveapps.com/receipts). Download the app, take pictures of your receipts, and they will upload directly to a Receipts tab in your Wave account. You can also upload receipts directly from the web or forward your receipts from your email and they will go directly to your Wave account. Best part is, this one is free.

The only reason you would not want to scan your receipts and then discard them is if you have a business and you expense your receipts for business reasons. Or, if you claim certain expenses on your tax return for child care, etc. Canada Revenue Agency still wants us to have paper records.

However, the scanning software could save you some accounting fees when it comes to tax time as everything will be organized, so still something to consider

Jane Veldhoven is a Certified Professional Organizer® and owner of Get Organized! Professional Services.  www.janetheorganizer.com

Intuit Sets New 52-Week High at $88.84 (INTU)

 American Banking News writes: Shares of Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) reached a new 52-week high during trading on Friday , Analyst Ratings.Net reports. The stock traded as high as $88.84 and last traded at $88.06, with a volume of 417,058 shares changing hands. The stock had previously closed at $86.83.

Several analysts have recently commented on the stock. Analysts at Zacks upgraded shares of Intuit from an “underperform” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 22nd. They now have a $84.40 price target on the stock. Separately, analysts at Evercore Partners downgraded shares of Intuit from an “equal weight” rating to an “underweight” rating in a research note on Thursday, October 2nd. They now have a $77.00 price target on the stock. Finally, analysts at RBC Capital initiated coverage on shares of Intuit in a research note on Monday, September 15th. They set an “outperform” rating and a $105.00 price target on the stock. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have issued a hold rating, three have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Intuit currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $85.80.

The stock has a 50-day moving average of $84.07 and a 200-day moving average of $80.90. The company has a market cap of $25.130 billion and a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.85.

Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, August 21st. The company reported $0.01 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.07 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $714.00 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $699.49 million. Intuit’s revenue was up 12.6% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts expect that Intuit will post $2.48 EPS for the current fiscal year.