Receipts

[dmaze]

For whatever reason, I have a deeply-held belief that it's important to keep copies of receipts. If I were a good person, I'd double-check the receipt against the credit card bill when it shows up. Of course, the problem with this theory is that (a) I'm not religious enough about it for any discrepancy between what I think the statement should say and what it does say to be a problem, (b) I don't actually go through and double-check, and therefore (c) the office is filled with a year's worth of little slips.

Excepting things where you actually care about having a proof-of-purchase, how is having a receipt useful to me? If my gas pump can send my PDA an expense record magically and my PDA can enter it into my accounting software, does the paper receipt matter? What if the Apple Store wants to send my a receipt by email (they do, and it's pretty cool, but I never actually printed it out)? Is there any value beyond just waiting until the credit card statement shows up? Why do I think this anyways?

Comments

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

I do not save receipts or balance my checkbook. I only save receipts if it's stuff I need to get reimbursed for. I am still saving credit card statements, for no good reason, though.

[gigglefest.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I also come at this from the other side (though I do balance my checkbook and am one of those people who accounts for *everything* in Gnucash). But I also really like purging stuff and not keeping a lot of paper around, and have a hard time convincing myself that I really need to keep old bank statements (let alone canceled checks) and cell phone bills and such.

[gigglefest.livejournal.com]

Receipts: I keep them in my wallet until they get entered in Gnucash, then they get shredded unless I might want to return something or I need to get reimbursed. It works fine for me (I suppose keeping them in my wallet also provides incentive to deal with them fairly soon), but YMMV of course.