The Neat Company Forums

This Year, Keep Your New Year’s Resolution to “Get Organized”!

What do I do with all these business cards?

How should I store my business receipts?

Where should I keep these great articles that I’d like to read again sometime?

These are some of the questions my clients ask when they are ready to get organized. Until about 6 months ago, my answers were very different. Today, I simply say “Neat Receipts!”

As an organizing consultant, my passion in life is helping people simplify and organize all the paper and information that comes into their lives at the speed of light.

Just when you get the dining room table cleared off so you can actually eat at it, here comes the mail!  

And just when you finish putting the holiday decorations away, it’s time to break out the shoe boxes full of receipts for tax time. I know, sorry to bring it up….

One of the biggest issues I’ve found, universally, is business cards. Whether you’re in the business world, or you are a home executive managing the business of life, you probably have business cards lying around on your desk or your kitchen counter….you pick them up a hundred times, only to put them back down in another spot.

As I was learning more about Neat Receipts, this great new tool for scanning my receipts for organized tax preparation, I found an added bonus! It also scans business cards! And…imports them into Outlook! (I teach a lot of my clients how to use Outlook as a simple contact management system—I was thrilled to discover that Neat Receipts works seamlessly with Outlook.)

Tips for Using Neat Receipts While Traveling for Business

In the past when you traveled for business, you would come home with your pockets, wallet and briefcase full of receipts and business cards. Now imagine this. You take Neat Receipts along…it’s about the size of a thick ruler…in your hotel room, you:

1. Turn on your laptop and plug in your Neat Receipts Scanner.
2. Open up your Neat Receipts software.
3. Create a new “Expense Report” called “XYZ Trip”
4. Scan each receipt you’ve collected so far.
5. Rip up the receipts into tiny little shreds and throw them away!

You can quickly see how much you’ve spent so far on your trip and you don’t have to worry about keeping up with all those scraps of paper for the rest of the trip. Neat Receipts also scans 8 ½ x 11 pages so you can scan your hotel receipts as well!

Now do the same thing for all the business cards you’ve collected so far and you’re traveling lighter on your way home!

I’ll be the first to admit that the paperless office has not quite made it to reality. We will always have some paper that we need to keep in physical format. But we don’t have to keep all of it. My new mantra is Scan If You Can!  (Then toss or recycle the paper!)

Written by Andrea Anderson, Anderson Productivity Solutions—December 2006

Andrea is a professional organizing consultant who helps people around the globe learn to get organized and tame their paper tiger. You can visit Andrea on the web at www.andersonproductivitysolutions.com or by calling 910-431-2436. 

Do you know someone who is interested in becoming a Virtual Organizing Consultant?  If so, visit www.organizertrainingonline.com.