Track expenses the easy way
— -- Wanting to get your financial life under control? The first step toward making that happen is to track your expenses, so you can see where the money is really going.
If that brings to mind nightmare images of ledgers and paper receipts, it's time to come into the 21st century. As with most things in life, there's a digital solution, and it's so much better than the old way. With a few key resources, you'll be organized and improving your fiscal efficiency in no time.
Whether you need to track household finances or keep track of job-related costs to maximize your income tax refund, it's all much easier with the right digital service.
For instance, if you need to track personal expenses, try the Web service Lemon ( www.lemon.com). It gives you a location online for storing all your receipts. It will organize them automatically so you'll never lose one again, and you'll be able to access them quickly if you need to prove a purchase, return an item or backup a deduction.
Getting your receipts into Lemon is a cinch. You can e-mail digital receipts directly into an @lemon.com e-mail account that you set up yourself. Or you can simply give the account address to the merchant for direct filing.
Dealing mostly with paper receipts? Don't you hate how they take over your pockets or your purse? Just take a snapshot of the receipt with your smartphone. The Lemon app then scans and uploads the receipt for you. You can then shred the original. Good riddance. Mobile apps are available for iPhone and Android phones.
Lemon doesn't simply store images. It can identify items you purchased and give you reports on where your money is going. You can even search for receipts using the items they contain as keywords.
The best part is that Lemon is free, so you can give it a try without commitment. And, as you might imagine, Lemon isn't the only tracking service available.
Let's say you need something that's geared more toward business. In that case, take a look at Shoeboxed ( www.shoeboxed.com). It has most of Lemon's features, including an upload for receipt processing and expense tracking available online.
If you want a free service, Shoeboxed probably isn't your best choice. The free account allows you to send images, but you'll have to do all the processing yourself. This means you'll be manually entering what you purchased and how much it cost.
With the paid plans, however, Shoeboxed will process documents for you. You can even mail in a stack of receipts to have them digitized. This is very valuable when you're trying to digitize your business.
Shoeboxed keeps track of expenses and can prepare the usual reports. It can integrate with accounting software and other businesses tools you use. For example, you can scan business cards and integrate them into your customer database. Shoeboxed also offers an iPhone app.
Of special interest to CPAs, Shoeboxed offers multi-user accounts, and all scanned receipts are IRS acceptable. That makes tax preparation and audits much easier.
Finally, you can try Expensify ( www.expensify.com). Like Shoeboxed, this is geared more toward business needs. You receive an app that can scan receipts and process them for expense tracking.
