Why you should throw out your expense receipts!
Many of us have had the experience of sitting down at the end of the month to do your work expenses only to end up digging through pockets, bags and even the bin (next to the banana skins) for that escapee sandwich receipt or train ticket.
According to a recent survey conducted by Barclaycard, UK workers are losing out on £962 million because of misplaced receipts and unclaimed costs. Of those surveyed, 37% said they cannot be bothered with the hassle of claiming for low value expenses, and so are never reimbursed! In addition, lost receipts counted as the top reason why employees didn’t claim money they were owed.
With all of this, surely it’s even more important to hoard your paper receipts, create a filing system for your wallet (or purse) and employ an archivist to make sure your receipt for £1.33 (Greggs Steak Bake - Newport Pagnell Services) doesn’t go missing, right?
WRONG!
Carefully keeping and storing your paper receipts, stapling them to a printed off expenses form and posting it off to finance is, fortunately, a thing of the past.
Today, you can get expense management software on your phone. With all the effort of taking a picture, you can capture your receipt and have it stored on the cloud instantly. Short of 7 meteor strikes over 4 continents (Access Expense cloud servers are located all around the world) that digital copy isn’t getting lost. Meanwhile, after an encounter with the washing machine, your paper receipt comes out looking like hamster bedding.
Getting into the habit of snapping your receipt or ticket as soon as you're given it means your money is secure, you can claim it back from your company and your company can claim the VAT back (if applicable). And, you don’t have to worry about looking for paper receipts ever again.
You can even enter the receipt details there and then after you’ve snapped a picture. Because your receipts are now in the cloud, organised automatically by date, when the time comes to submit your expenses you can simply look it over and press a button.
HMRC will accept scanned receipts of virtually any expense, and don’t need a paper copy. However, there’s always an exception to the rule. It’s rare but documents that show tax that isn’t VAT, for example bank interest certificates or dividend vouchers must be kept in their original format, i.e. paper or PDF. That shouldn’t stop you ditching paper for 99.9% of the receipts you’ll claim in practice though, and that PDF can be uploaded to the cloud too! You’ll save both time and recoup your spent money, and your finance department will thank you too.
Ditch the paper and never go back to rooting through the bin again.
