Sort Receipts for the Bookkeeper (Part 1)

Posted by admin on Jul 5, 2011 in Bookkeeping | 13 comments

I now have a bookkeeper, but I don’t have a lot of money to spend on one. This is a very common theme among small business. I know I need that bookkeeper, so how do I cut down on the cost? We will help you with one way – sort all the sales and expense receipts for the bookkeeper yourself before delivering it.

Sorting receipts for the bookkeeper will still give you the piece of mind, knowing that they will enter the data in properly for you. At the same time, you are now seeing for yourself what receipts have been going through your business, kinda like a “pre-check” of what you are spending. Sorting receipts will cut down your cost because that is one less duty the bookkeeper performs. And trust me when I say this, they WILL charge you for sorting receipts.

Talk to your bookkeeper about how you want your bookkeeping kept. Ask him or her what would be the best approach for you and your business before you start sorting your receipts.

In part 1 of this 2-part series, we will look at how you can sort your receipts in preparation of passing off your books to the bookkeeper:

Sort your receipts by category. This is the simplest method of sorting receipts. If you are a proprietor or a partnership, run a simple operation and do not keep track of bank statements or credit card statements, you can sort your receipts by category. You can sort these in several different categories: general purchases, supplies, auto fuel, auto maintenance, repairs and maintenance, utilities, office supplies, and the list goes on. If you wish to obtain a detailed list of items to sort by, please e-mail head office at toserveyou@seianna.com. These can even be organized by month for easier entry.

Advantages: this is the cheapest and fastest way to have an income statement prepared. A Seianna Financial Services bookkeeper quite often will use an Excel spreadsheet to get your income statement prepared when you use this method of sorting. It is also easy to file away receipts once they have been entered into the accounting system. Make sure you keep all your receipts in one place so you don’t lose them!

Disadvantages: without bank and credit card statements, missing or lost receipts may get missed and therefore you are losing out on claiming eligible expenses. Also, since your bookkeeper is batching entries for speedier process, you are not tracking what you are spending from different vendors or how much customers are spending at your business.

If you have a large amount of receipts, this also may not be the favored choice, as Excel will not track sales and expenses in a month-by-month basis.

Seianna Financial Services is “Serious About Your Business”. Go to our bookkeeping page and check out our prices, service guarantee and to contacts to find an office most convenient for you. We can do bookkeeping for clients in every province and territory except Quebec.