As a business owner, you are required by the Canada Revenue Agency to provide records of all your business transactions for 7 years. They must be kept in a secure and accessible place.

Ever notice those nasty receipts printed on thermal paper that fades after a few months? Well, CRA does not care; you still need to provide proof of that receipt. All those tricks you try that Google tells you about may not work well. So what can you do?

With technology the way it is today, we don’t have any excuses. You need to decide what works best for you as an individual. There are many free and for a charge apps that you can use on your smartphone. These apps will take a picture or scan of your receipt and keep it either in the cloud or downloaded to your computer. Some online accounting programs have a mobile app that lets you store the receipt and input the information related to the receipt directly into your bookkeeping software. One such program is Quickbooks.

I have experimented with a few of these apps – Neat, Expensify, and Receipt Scanner by Num Receipts Inc. – but I don’t have a preference.

Don’t have a smartphone that can provide you with access to these apps? No worries; there are many small receipt scanners out there that you can attach to your computer via Bluetooth or USB.