How is your bottom drawer?

Is it full of shoe-boxes containing bundles of receipts that you ought to sort out for your accountant?

Do you know where to start? Do you start at the bottom and work upwards, or the other way around?

Here is my small business administration tip for today…

1. Sort them into twelve piles by month and then put eleven of the piles into envelopes marked with the appropriate month.
2. The pile that you have left is your task for today, sort them into the categories that your accountant has already given you, such as:
   Motor Vehicle and petrol; Travel expenses (including taxis, tolls and parking); Postage, printing and stationery; Staff amenities (tissues, tea, coffee, milk, sugar etc – and, annoyingly, if you are claiming GST you will have to separate these into GST and GST free piles); Research materials; and so on. Put paper clips on each little bundle, add them up and put them into your petty cash spreadsheet, or just leave them for your book-keeping service to record appropriately.

That’s enough for one day, leave another envelope for Monday. Do one every few days, and soon those shoe-boxes will be looking a lot more tidy. Who knows, if you get all your book-keeping done and handed over to your accountant, you may be able to afford to buy some real shoes to put into those boxes!