Tuesday Tip: Automate Receipt Tracking

[Matthew Cervoni]

Keeping track of receipts is a crucial part of claiming tax deductions and passing an IRS examination. While it can be very annoying to remember to do this with your expenses, good tax planning is all about creating systems that make following the rules effortless. 

At a minimum, photos of receipts should be stored in a cloud drive (such as Google Drive) that you can easily access and upload with your mobile device. 

A more robust option that allows for receipt tracking automation is Hubdoc. This software integrates with Quickbooks and Xero and allows you to forward email receipts & attachments to a custom Hubdoc email for your business. For receipts that do not come through email, you can also scan information into the Hubdoc app via your mobile phone camera. 

We like to take it a step further and setup a Gmail filter that automatically forwards all of our business expense receipts to Hubdoc for recurring transactions or commonly used vendors. 

If you’re interested in setting up this automation, here is how we did it:

1. Step 1: Click the Settings gear in Gmail > then click "See All Settings"
2. Step 2: Go to the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab
3. Step 3: Add your Hubdoc email to "Add a forwarding address" (Your Hubdoc account will receive a verification code you'll need to enter)
4. Step 4: Under “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” click "creating a filter!" and in the "From" box add the email address of your vendor. In the "Has the Words" input, use words from the vendor’s recurring email subject line
5. Step 5: Click "Create Filter" and in the check box list that appears, choose "Forward" and select your Hubdoc email
6. Step 6: Lastly, click "Create Filter" in the bottom right