It's a Sunday in spring, the accountant wants last year's costs by Friday, and you're scrolling a year of bank lines trying to remember what "AMZN 47.90" was. Some receipts are in a drawer, some in your email, and some are gone.
In short: record each business cost when you pay, with its category and a photo of the receipt. Keep business spending on its own account. Spend 15 minutes on a weekly check for gaps. At tax time, your accountant gets a list that's already sorted, instead of a box.
- Pay from the business account
- Record it with the receipt
- 15-minute weekly check
- Sorted list at tax time
This is about organization, not tax law. What counts as a business cost, how long you must keep records and which documents are accepted differ by country. Ask your accountant.
A worked example
Made-up but realistic: a freelance photographer with 120 business receipts a year, about €45 each.
| Time spent | Costs you can't prove | |
|---|---|---|
| Recorded when paid (20 seconds each) | about 40 minutes a year | almost none |
| Found at tax time (3 minutes each) | about 6 hours | 1 in 10 lost, about €540 |
€540
The time difference is real, but the bigger cost is the missing receipts. A cost you can't prove usually can't lower your tax. And a receipt is easiest to keep in the 20 seconds after you've paid, while it's still in your hand.
What a good record holds
For each business cost, accountants and tax authorities generally want the same things:
- What it was and why it's a business cost (the category, and a note if it isn't obvious).
- When and how much, including fees.
- Proof: the receipt or invoice.
- The business share, if the cost is mixed, like a phone or a car.
The steps
1. Pay business costs from the business account
That way most records sort themselves: everything on that account is business (a three-account setup).
2. Keep the category list short
Equipment, software, travel, phone and internet, professional fees, bank fees. Six to ten categories. Avoid "Misc"; it's where receipts go to be lost.
3. Record the receipt when you pay
A photo, attached to the transaction, before you put the phone away.
4. Decide the business share of mixed costs once
For example, half of the phone. Write down why, and use the same share every time.
5. Do a 15-minute weekly check
Anything without a receipt? Find it now, while you still remember it. Anything from the bank you didn't record? Add it.
6. Do a quarterly review
Look at costs by category. Anything missing, like a yearly insurance or a subscription? Hand the accountant a sorted list, not a box.
The traps
- One card for everything. Every personal purchase in the list is one you have to explain or remove.
- "I'll scan them in spring." Thermal receipts fade, and emails get buried.
- Claiming all of a mixed cost, or none of it. Decide the share once and stick to it.
- Forgetting bank and card fees. They're small, they're frequent, and they're business costs too.
Try it on last month
Take last month's business account statement and count the lines you could prove today, with a receipt in hand. That's your starting point.
One thing to do today
Pick one place for receipts, a folder or the app you use, and put the next business receipt there within a minute of paying.
Where Volora fits
In Volora, record each business cost in a business wallet with its category, and attach a photo of the receipt to the transaction. Each expense has a tax-deductible switch, pre-filled from the category, with a deductible share for mixed costs. A payment that covers several things can be split across categories. Bank transactions can come in by CSV import, with duplicates detected. Volora keeps the records organized; it doesn't file taxes or produce official tax forms.