Receipts for tradies: snap it the day you get it

Every tradie knows the shoebox. Receipts in the glovebox, on the dash, in the pocket of last week's shorts. Come tax time it is a heap of faded paper, half of it unreadable, and money you spent on the business that you can no longer prove.

Every receipt you lose is a deduction you might not get to claim. Fixing it takes about ten seconds a receipt.

Snap it the day you get it

The habit is simple: photograph the receipt before you leave the counter, or as soon as you get back to the ute. Same day, every time. Thermal paper receipts fade, especially sitting on a hot dash, and a receipt you cannot read is not much use to anyone.

The ATO accepts clear digital copies of receipts, so a good photo can stand in for the paper. Check the ATO's record keeping guidance for the details that apply to you.

File it against the job

A photo sitting in your camera roll between the footy and the dog is only a little better than the shoebox. Six months later you will not remember which job that $86 of timber was for.

Use an app that files each receipt against the job or customer as you take it. Then you can see what each job really cost you, not just what you charged, and nothing gets lost when you change phones.

Write down what it was for

A quick note makes a receipt far more useful: "Smith job, extra sleepers", "fuel, Queanbeyan run", "new drop saw". If you ever need to explain an expense, the note does the explaining for you.

Keep them for five years

As a general rule, the ATO asks you to keep business records for five years. Digital copies make that easy. Paper fades and gets lost. Files do not, as long as they are backed up somewhere other than one phone.

Tax time is then just handing it over

When every receipt is filed against a job as you go, tax time stops being a weekend of sorting. Your expenses are already listed and totalled, and your accountant gets a tidy set of records instead of a shoebox. That usually means a smaller bill from them too.

How Its All Sorted helps

In Its All Sorted you snap a receipt straight into the job it belongs to. It is stored with the job, totalled with your other expenses, and ready to hand to your accountant at tax time, so nothing lives in the glovebox or gets lost in your camera roll.