Less Stress at Tax Time & ALL Year Long!
Active Paper:
Anything that you are currently working on that requires you to take some kind of action or waiting for a response.
This paperwork should be kept in view, perhaps on your desktop or in a designated area in your kitchen etc., where it is easy to access and won’t be forgotten.
Shown here is an example of active paper for our client’s busy family.
If you are self employed, the Winnable file folder shown below is the perfect way to keep track of bills and receipts so you don’t miss out on any deductions come tax time.
Be sure to write on each receipt what it is for (office supplies, lunch with client, gas, etc) and tuck it in the appropriately labelled category. At the end of the year, you are ready to hand over to your bookkeeper or accountant. No more searching through your sock drawers, on top of the fridge, jacket pockets, car glove boxes, under the bed … oh we know where you stash these bits of paper!!
Reference Paper:
Any document that you need to have handy to make reference to, and that you are not actively working on, should be filed away in a file cabinet.
I recommend using hanging files only without internal folders.
Since these are not active files, you are not taking them out enough to justify the space those extra file folders take up, and you won’t have files covering up your file tabs.
Archive Paper:
Any documents that you are no longer using, but those which must be kept for legal or personal reasons. AKA cover your butt paper.
These include tax returns, medical records, insurance policies/claims, past mortgage papers, and so on. We don’t want these using up valuable space in your filing cabinet, so store them in banker boxes.
It is worth investing in plastic for these to protect your documents from dust mites and damage due to moisture and water.
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