Scanned experience receipts. Do you keep the paper copy?

[gisp]

Old ltd has close to 1xxx receipts/tickets over long period.
All of them stored in a box. Messy.
For ltd2 I am thinking scanning every receipt.
However keeping the paper defies the purpose of scanning if say 6 years down the line taxman questions my expenses and wants to see paper.
any suggestions?

[eek]

2 seconds on Google says no need from a source that will be accurate


https://www.freeagent.com/guides/exp...ness-expenses/

[northernladuk]

I throw mine in an intray and do my expenses monthly. Clip them all together and tick as processes and back in the intray. Every couple of months or when I can be arsed I just get all the clipped ones and store them in a lever arch file. Every other year I take the previous years ones and put them in a box in the loft.

Sounds onerous but it's not. Not messy at all. I'm struggling to see how scanning them is any quicker to be honest.

[eek]

I throw mine in an intray and do my expenses monthly. Clip them all together and tick as processes and back in the intray. Every couple of months or when I can be arsed I just get all the clipped ones and store them in a lever arch file. Every other year I take the previous years ones and put them in a box in the loft.

Sounds onerous but it's not. Not messy at all. I'm struggling to see how scanning them is any quicker to be honest.

I take photos as I go and throw it into the system - was useful when I was at MS because it meant I could send an expenses invoice with say all 20+ expenses on a single pdf

[gisp]

Thanks eek.
so it's a go.
If I can not have 1xxx pieces of paper in a box, that is what I prefer.
Needless to say 5 year old receipt is just pure white piece of paper. They fade out.

[ladymuck]

I scan all my receipts then bin them. They are then attached to the relevant transaction in Xero (other online accounting systems have the same feature). They are all properly dated and filed for easy retrieval if needed.

[cojak]

On the basis that many paper receipts will fade away to nothing (I know, I’ve been binning a shedload recently), I would say that scanned receipts are better than paper and you can organise them more efficiently.

[edison]

The ones that fade tend to be receipts that are printed on thermal paper.

It is supposedly possible to restore such a faded receipt by gently applying heat to the back for a few seconds. Then it's at least good enough to scan/take a photo if needed.

I started scanning when I opened a box of old receipts and found many had faded, some almost beyond recognition.

[northernladuk]

To be fair, if the fact a couple of individual receipts have faded over 5 years becomes an issue in an investigation then you are probably already royally f**ked. No way will HMIT be remotely interested in a few faded receipts unless he's already wrist deep up your bum. Worrying about faded receipts is a red herring.

[PerfectStorm]

Good contractors scan and forget - its searchable with metadata, doesn't fade, and doesn't take up physical space. Freeagent has the facility to do this automatically, I only realised recently - it's called "Capture for later" under the Plus menu on the app. Doing it this way enables the OCR functions.

I used to use Expensify which was very good too, but doesn't really play with Freeagent as far as I can tell.

When I was investigated, it was very easy to export a list of receipt URLs for the inspectors.