Guide
Expense receipts without the shoebox: a simple system
Receipts get lost, expense claims arrive late and the card statement never quite matches. A simple system for collecting receipts as they happen and keeping spend inside your rules.
Key takeaways
- The cost of a lost receipt isn't the receipt. It's the hour spent chasing it at month end.
- Collect receipts where they happen: one address and one chat channel that everyone uses.
- Match each receipt to its card payment the same day, while people still remember what it was.
- Write a short spending policy, so most expenses can be checked without asking anyone.
Why receipts go missing
Receipts go missing for the same reason every time: the moment of spending and the moment of recording are weeks apart. Someone pays for a client lunch on the company card, puts the paper receipt in a coat pocket and forgets it. Three weeks later the card statement arrives, finance asks what the €86.40 was, and nobody is sure.
Multiply that by a team with company cards, subscriptions and the odd taxi, and month end turns into an investigation. The fix is to close that gap: record each expense on the day it happens.
Collect receipts where they happen
People won't open a finance tool to upload a receipt. They will forward an email or send a photo. So give them two places and no more: one email address for receipts and invoices, and one chat channel for photos. Everything that arrives in either place gets filed.
Most online purchases already send a receipt by email. Ask suppliers and services to send them straight to the receipts address, and that part of the problem goes away on its own.
Match each receipt to its payment
A receipt on its own isn't enough; it has to be matched to the card or bank payment it belongs to. Do it daily. On the day, the match is obvious and the person who spent the money remembers what it was for. A month later it's guesswork.
Matching daily also gives you a short, useful list: card payments with no receipt yet. That's the only list anyone needs to chase, and it stays short because it's checked every day.
- Read the receipt: supplier, date, amount, tax
- Find the matching card or bank payment
- Record it against the right account and, if you use them, the right project or client
- Attach the receipt to the record, so it's there at audit time
- Ask the person who spent it, the same day, if a payment has no receipt
A spending policy people can follow
Most expense questions are the same few questions. Write the answers down: what people can spend on, up to how much without asking, what needs a manager's approval and what's never allowed. Keep it to a page.
A clear policy turns most expenses into a simple check. A €14 taxi to a client meeting is inside the rules and needs nobody. A €600 flight booked without approval isn't, and goes to the right person with the receipt attached. Subscriptions deserve their own line: who can sign up for software, and who reviews them before they renew.
What a good month end looks like
When receipts are filed daily, month end is a review instead of a hunt. Every card payment already has a receipt and an account. The list of missing receipts is short or empty. Out-of-policy spend has already been seen and decided. The accountant gets clean records instead of a folder of photos.
This is also where VAT gets easier. A receipt that's read on the day carries its tax correctly into the books, instead of being estimated later.
Handing it off
This is routine, rule-based work, which makes it a good first thing to hand off. The Accountant at OFFHOURS reads receipts as they arrive by email or chat, matches them to card and bank payments, records them in your accounting software and checks them against your spending policy. Anything outside the policy, or any payment with no receipt, comes to a person with the evidence attached.
It works inside the systems you already use, it's working within a week, and every action is logged and can be undone. Anyone on the team can send it a receipt without needing access of their own.
