Small business owners are notorious for gathering stacks of business cards and never having the time to build that follow up database.  I discussed ways a VA can help in this situation.  There is another “stack” that small business owners are notorious for collecting… is it the dreaded stack of receipts!  Receipts for meals, office supplies, invoices and so on…. When it is getting closer to the end of the year we all start dreading dealing with the “stack”!  Here are a couple of simple tips for  organizing (well they might not help this year but if you implement it now you will be on track for next year) Tip #1 – keep a pen with you everywhere and when you get a receipt for anything jot a note on it – for example if it is a meal receipt, who did you meet with? a small note on what was discussed, just enough to jog your memory. Tip #2 –  get an accordion file keeper and label the sections “meals”, “office supplies”, “business expenses”, “events”, “advertising *& marketing” and so on (you can get some suggestions from your accountant of sections they would like to see)  THEN here is the hard part…put the receipt in the file keeper in the right section!  A VA can help create a nice excel report for your tax accountant and your files listing all of the receipts along with the notes so “gosh for bid” you ever got audited you had ledgable notes and are organized!  I work a lot with my own records like this creating a chart by category and sorted by dates with all of the info – when, where, who and why on my excel!  My tax accountants Gail Hargrove in Granada Hills loves my system and wishes I would teach a class on it… well little did she know! And Bill Friedman Santa Clarita likes the organization and the fact I can just hand him my totals.