I will admit that despite my love of organization, I am not the most organized when it comes to paperwork. I tend to toss papers on my desk that I know I will need later (for tax purposes or other purposes) and then when the stack begins to get unruly, I will throw them all into a big envelope.
Not exactly a scientific approach, I know.
"How hard can it be?" you may be asking. Well, keep in mind we have documents and receipts for our primary home, 3 rental properties, and my real estate business, so there's a LOT of paperwork.
So after separating, organizing, and documenting all of the paperwork for the accountant, I decided to start 2014 off right. I labeled an envelope for my business receipts, one for our home receipts, and another for the rental property receipts. So going forward, rather than tossing papers into a heap on the desk, I will slip them into the appropriate envelope. Hopefully this will cut down on the amount of time needed next year to get our tax stuff ready for the accountant.
3 comments:
do yourself one better and make a total of 12 envelops (one for each month) for each category.
I do this myself; I have an envelope for the year in which to put the charitable receipts (mostly). the rest of the paperwork (e.g., W2s) wait until january.
I realize my gathering is much smaller/easier than yours.
but you are on the way to a stress-less filing next year!
I understand your predicament. Maybe it's because most pieces of paper look alike, which is why people mishandle them. You're right in using envelopes to help reduce the monotony. You could even use different colors to make classification easier. This should help you and your accountant greatly when it's tax season. Or you can even buy those organizing plastic envelops that students tend to have, for filing everything in one compact location. Good luck!
Rebecca Cross @ Advanced Accounts
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