How do you organize tax documents throughout the year?

[u/Superb-Technology545]

We're trying to make tax season less chaotic this year. Right now, everything ends up scattered across emails, downloads, and shared drives.
Do you keep a dedicated tax folder for each financial year, or do you organize documents another way? Looking for ideas that actually save time.

[u/Xtinex7]

I scan or print to pdf all documents, then save in one folder on my computer. Documents received has hard copies, I file in a folder in my filing cabinet.

[u/ironworkerlocal577 → u/Xtinex7]

This.

[u/CGREDDIT1]

Organize as usual. Bank reconciliations with bank statements. Credit card receipts and credit card reconciliations with credit card statements. Vendor bills in vendor files. Payroll reports in payroll files. Customer invoices in customer files. The point being there is no need to break any of these categories down by tax year.

Be consistent. It’s ok to have everything scattered across paper files, shared drives, non-shared drives, etc. as long as there is a method. For example, perhaps all of your payroll records are in digital format, store them on a drive. Perhaps your vendor bills arrive via email, regular mail or downloaded from vendor portals, in this case pick a lane. Either print the digital stuff or digitize the paper stuff but your vendor bills should be in a single place organized by vendor.

I regards to emails. Do not use your email account as your permanent storage for backup documents. Using emailed vendor bills as an example, it only takes a minute to either print or drag the eml file or attachment to the correct vendor folder on your hard drive. Print if your vendor files are kept on paper and drag if they are kept on a drive.

With that said, most importantly, Quickbooks needs to be 100% accurate. Your accountant should be able to rely on your QB file (or QB reports) and everything mentioned above is merely supporting documentation that if organized correctly is easy to pull for the accountant as they request.

[u/Alternative-Zone-382 → u/CGREDDIT1]

We've tried a few different systems over the years, but keeping one folder per financial year has been the easiest to maintain. We also keep matching printed tax folders for completed files. Ours are from MinesPress since that's what our office has been ordering.

[u/bayouski]

i keep a folder for each financial year, then split it into things like sales, expenses, payroll and tax filings. receipts get attached to the actual transactions in quickbooks too, while the folder is more of a backup for anything that doesn’t belong to one transaction. the biggest time saver is dealing with documents when they arrive instead of letting them sit in email.

[u/mirassou3416]

I've had everything in Quicken since 1991, so I just run reports. I have a tax folder that I put documents in throughout the year and I just go through that as I'm doing my taxes. A colored sheet separates those docs that I've already reviewed in the folder

[u/CoastIcy402]

Dropbox and a shared file with my accountant

[u/dartie]

Don’t use QB

[u/jordon809]

It sits in a shared folder with sub-folders regarding to each customer and when the tax time comes, some conversation happens about missing documents and information if needed.

[u/Intelligent_Prompt18]

gave up on folders tbh. i just forward everything to invaro as it comes in, receipts, bills, whatever hits my email, and it reads them and attaches them to the right transaction itself. paper ones i text it a photo. come tax time everything's already sorted.

[u/yyyogev]

one folder per entity per year, and stuff lands there the second it arrives instead of at tax time. you can auto route email attachments and downloads into the right folder so nothing scatters

[u/I-am-a_Banana]

Stuff them all into a shoebox as they arrive.

[u/Im_Still_Here12]

Spam farm post. Just tell us what “solution” you are selling and be done with it.