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How I Save My Massage Business Email Receipts

I've finally got a good system for scanning and managing the paper receipts, but for a long time dealing with email receipts befuddled me. Should I save them? Archive them? Use a service (like Evernote or Shoeboxed) where I forward them to a certain email address and they save automatically? Wha??

And then I realized I could just save an email as a document, and put it in a file. Duh.

Silly, I know. I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. Here we go:

Step 1- Create a fold for the receipts. I keep my folder in Dropbox, because I don't want to lose those records if my computer dies unexpectedly, and Dropbox is easy to share with my bookkeeper if she has questions. You may choose a file on your desktop (be sure to do frequent backups) or a Google Drive folder. Whatever works for you is just fine.

Step 2- File it right away. As soon as you receive it. Right that instant, no excuses. It takes under 20 seconds, and means that my email box stays much neater, I need that. I get distracted easily.

Step 3- Archive the email. 

Done! You can see me follow this process in the super short video below.

It's really easy in my email program. If you use a web-based email, there may be a few more steps. Usually the 'print' feature includes an option to save the email as a PDF and file to a specific folder. Check it out: