Does anyone keep Receipts nowadays?

[CloudWalker]

In London more people are adopting contactless payments for travel and buying food / coffee ect.
But does anyone keep Receipts nowadays?
I use a bPay wrist band to travel on the tube and buy lunch. But the transactions are all logged digitally so no Physical Receipts
Just wondering if a spread sheet would suffice ?

[SouthernManc78]

I have been wondering the same myself recently as I've got a new business debit card with contactless on it, my conclusion from my own research is that I still needed receipts as I couldn't imagine HMRC being happy with just the record of the transaction on the business bank statement.

I get a receipt and use Freeagent to scan and log it so I can then throw the original in a shoebox and it doesn't matter if it's not readable in a few years time

[jbond007]

In London more people are adopting contactless payments for travel and buying food / coffee ect.
But does anyone keep Receipts nowadays?
I use a bPay wrist band to travel on the tube and buy lunch. But the transactions are all logged digitally so no Physical Receipts
Just wondering if a spread sheet would suffice ?

All journeys on tube/london network are traceable as long as you register online. You can see details of your journeys which can be used as receipts.

As for lunch, etc - surely you can ask for receipt and scan it.

[DallasDad]

Old habits die hard, swmbo keeps receipts for nearly everything for ever!

Household stuff is filed away for years and occasionally that proves useful bless her!
We made a warranty claim on some 11 year old double glazing units that had misted up not so long ago.
She also keeps all instruction booklets, I found one for something circa 1975 called a Sinclair Scientific calculator the other day when having a clear out.

All business related receipts get scanned and if suitable also uploaded into freeagent then she disappears with them for safe keeping.

On a more serious note.
Who has all their key paperwork, passports, birth certificates, will, house insurance etc in a fireproof box if not elsewhere in a safety deposit box and who has a household exit plan that involves grabbing said box and lobbing it out of a window (probably alongside other personal valuables) yep we do....

[jonnieboy]

I use BizXpensTrkr on my iPhone - after lunch or whatever, I just add the transaction to the app and take a photo of the receipt. Each week/month, the app generates an expense claim form complete with receipts as a pdf which I store electronically.

[VillageContractor]

If I'm going to expense something then yes. Although I take a pic and most likely lose the paper copy.

If I'm being good I store the paper receipt away, just in case.

[Fred Bloggs]

I have been wondering the same myself recently as I've got a new business debit card with contactless on it, my conclusion from my own research is that I still needed receipts as I couldn't imagine HMRC being happy with just the record of the transaction on the business bank statement.

I get a receipt and use Freeagent to scan and log it so I can then throw the original in a shoebox and it doesn't matter if it's not readable in a few years time

Sorry if I'm a bit dim, does FreeAgent fire up the scanner and upload the receipt automatically then? Or is it a manual scan and upload?

[missinggreenfields]

Paper receipt goes in a polly pocket for the month with an expenses sheet at the front of it so I can easily find it if there is any need to.

At the end of the year (or earlier if I'm bored) they go through the scanner (Fujitsu Scansnap S1300i) and saved to PDF for each month.

Once the accounts have been prepared, all paper copies go through the shredder (Fellowes Automax 130C) and the now empty folder is then used for the following year's accounts.

PDFs are backed up in case of any investigation.

[Fred Bloggs]

Paper receipt goes in a polly pocket for the month with an expenses sheet at the front of it so I can easily find it if there is any need to.

At the end of the year (or earlier if I'm bored) they go through the scanner (Fujitsu Scansnap S1300i) and saved to PDF for each month.

Once the accounts have been prepared, all paper copies go through the shredder (Fellowes Automax 130C) and the now empty folder is then used for the following year's accounts.

PDFs are backed up in case of any investigation.

Sounds like a good system. I save my pdf's to Google Drive though.

[Maslins]

Loosely related to this thread, had an interesting talk from FreeAgent a few months back about the future of bookkeeping/data verification. Where more and more people are using card to pay for even small purchases (especially since contactless), next step will likely be that your card, and hence bank, will know not only how much you spent and where, but what you were buying. Ok may sound a bit big brother...but it should make your bookkeeping easy.

Won't be that long until there'll be default codes attached to each item, and the supplier will be the one choosing what an item is, so when you buy it your bookkeeping automatically logs it to accountancy fees/computer hardware purchase etc etc. Assuming you don't manually muck about with these too much, then your data could to some extent be green flagged with HMRC.

Might be a little way off, but eventually could completely remove the need for receipts, as all data relating to that purchase will be somehow held in the background of that card payment.