Rustler’s Quickbooks Tips

Last year I began a paperless office, it takes a couple of extra steps but what a nice idea. Here is how I do it, it might work for you.

I set up a folder with the company name-paperless-<year>, then sub folders for the following (there are actually more but this so you get an idea)

Financial

bank-1

deposits

statements

bank-2

deposits

statements

Credit Card-1

Credit Card-2

Invoices

Invoices Paid

Purchase Orders
Contracts
Receipts

USPS

Gas

Food

Lodging

Printing

When I do a transaction I save the invoice to pdf in the appropriate folder. When an invoice is paid, rather than saving it all over again so it has the paid stamp on it I just move it to the paid folder.

I scan my receipts and print them to pdf in the folder they belong. Since my scanner software dates the receipt and I categorize them in folders there is no reason to change the name. Once it is saved in pdf I delete the scan from my scanning software - no reason to keep it. And of course when the receipt is scanned there is no longer a reason to keep it.

I keep everything in pdf because everyone can read a pdf, no special software is needed in the event of an audit. I print my tax returns and K-1’s to a folder called IRS too, then when I am done with the year I copy the whole folder to a CD as an annual record.

I actually have a folder that is called “paperless-master” that I only use to create a new company paperless folder each year. The paperless master folder contains only the sub folders, nothing is ever saved to it so I can use it year after year to create a new paperless folder.

In windows explorer, right click on the folder and then select “Copy”, then select the top level folder and right click and select “Paste” - windows explorer will create a complete duplicate copy of the folders and call it “copy of <folder name>”.

Then click in the folder name to highlight the folder, click one more time and the name will highlight, click one more time and a cursor will appear in the name and you can delete the words “copy of” and change the year to make a new year paperless folder.