I just spent the whole day with Mrs Credit Card doing our 2007 taxes and I can say that I absolutely hate it. I thought it would ages but it turns out that all it took was a good six hours. Next year, it would be much simpler. But here were the mistakes I made.

1. Not putting everything on a spreadsheet every month - I did keep my receipts in a folder organized by month. But I had failed to write behind every receipt the purpose and name of person I had met (I’m in a sales job).

2. Not having my work calendar (which is Microsoft outlook) accessible through my home PC - This made matching the receipts to events really cumbersome.

3. Not separating my credit card expenses properly - Regular readers will know the credit cards I use. But today, I realize that I have been using my credit cards effectively (not in terms of maxing out rewards). Our present situation is that we charge almost everything to our credit cards (and pay off in full). But our expenses can be broken down into household, my work, and our web business. Reconciling our expenses with our receipts becomes a nightmare.

How I plan to improve the situation this year

1. Input all my expenses in an excel spreadsheet weekly - I really hate doing things like that but I think I’ll have to commit to this to make our lives easier. It will also be easier to monitor current expenditure.

2. Carry a small receipt file wherever I go - I will start carrying a small receipt carrier in my car wherever I go and put my receipts in there immediately.

3. Get access to my work computer from home - I do not work from home (seldom anyway). For the most parts, it is family time and writing this blog! But I’ll speak to my IT guy to get this set up so that Mrs Credit Card can also see my schedule and I can work on the expenses together with my schedule at home.

4. Use one credit card for each of my expenses - This means I will start using one credit card for my work, one for our web business and one for our household expenditure. I’ll update my strategy for this in a later post.

5. Getting EZPass - Well, at least in Pennsylvania, it’s called EZPass. Reason I want to get it is to save time as I can just drive through the toll booths rather than having to stop. But also so that I can see how much I spend a year on the road without having to keep tons of receipts.

Other things I am considering

1. Hiring a book keeper - I’m sure Mrs Credit Card is against this because she has volunteered to perform this role. But this is such a mundane role that I think we could spend out time on more enjoyable stuff. I’ll have to check and see how costly it is to hire one to come just once a week!

2. Getting NeatReceipts - Neat Receipts is a cool gadget that lets you scan in your receipts so that you can store your receipts in your computer. The IRS accepts these electronic records. A couple of my friends have them and it is totally cool and neat. No more chunks of receipts? Need to discuss with Mrs Credit Card again.

Well, those are my thoughts at the moment. How are you folks out there organizing your expenses to make your life easy during tax time?

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 3:38 am and is filed under Personal Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.