On Sunday my post showed how many receipts I needed to enter into Quicken. Commenter Ken from Money Making Sense shared that he throws his receipts away once he’s entered them into his checkbook. Kudos to Ken for saving his receipts long enough to record them, some folks don’t bother keeping them for any length of time.
Top 7 reasons why I save my receipts:
- Don’t want the item - although usually I know within a week or two if this is the case. In this event, I put the receipt into a special pocket in my purse, or I give the receipt to Mr. A to keep in his wallet for his next trip to the store.
- Item breaks within return period, typically 90 days – this has happened countless times, unfortunately. It’s a horrible feeling when something breaks and I can’t find the receipt!
- Price Matching – The item might go on sale cheaper somewhere else or at that store. Typically we shop at the same stores, and some have 30 day price guarantees.
- Business expense receipts – all of Mr. A’s receipts are saved and filed by the month. If we lose a receipt we write down what the items were purchased on a piece of paper and include that with the other receipts. I don’t want to be unprepared if we were ever audited by the IRS.
- Receipts for business not purchased on business account – sometimes we buy items with our personal cards or cash for the business, so the business expense wouldn’t show up on Mr. A’s business credit card.
- Reimbursement – I buy products for my employer regularly, and I have been amazed at how many times I come across a receipt for an item that I forget to get reimbursed.
- Rebates – although usually if I need the receipt for a rebate I already know about it in advance and make a point to turn in the rebate soon after purchase.
Added by commenters:
- Oregon Sun shared that they were double charged on their debit card and had to have their receipt in order for the money to be placed into their account.
Tomorrow be sure to stop by and see how I store our receipts.
Do you have any other good reasons to save your receipts? Please add them in my comments and I will add them to this post.
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I absolutely look forward to tomorrow’s post. Am having the same issue myself.
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We made a purchase using our debit card, saved the receipt but for some reason were double charged. It took 2 weeks to get our money refunded to our account. We had to have our recipt. Scary thought! It was about $57.00 but more than we wanted to lose.
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
January 26th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Oregon Sun: I was double charged on a credit card not too long ago. If I hadn’t been looking over the receipts and putting them into Quicken I would have never caught it. Thankfully the charge was reversed. Thank you for adding to the reasons!
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@Mrs Accountability,
Thanks for the mention..and keep up the good writing.
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Hi Mrs A,
I always save business related receipts but to be honest I’m not too careful with the rest. It’s burned me in the past when I wanted to return something but misplaced the receipt. Many stores no longer accept any returns without a receipt so if you lose it you’re out of luck. Maybe I should follow your lead and start organizing them all from now on.
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I have always made a practice of saving every receipt regardless. I keep them all in an envelope and at the end of the year when tax time comes around I sort them out and see what I can claim and what I can’t claim. That way i don’t miss anything. Better not to miss anything than lose money you don;t need to lose to the tax man!
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
February 12th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Mike: I agree with you! Better safe than sorry when it comes to tax deductions!
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[...] My Top 7 Reasons to Store Receipts I need a system besides just throwing them in my purse for all the reasons mentioned by Mrs. Accountability @ Out of Debt Again I have an item I need to return to Walmart and haven’t because I don’t have a receipt. [...]
[...] as to how many receipts I entered for December, click here to read Those Darned Receipts. Visit My Top 7 Reasons to Save Receipts to see why I save all our receipts and click here to find how I file/store our receipts [...]