It's time for me to work on taxes for 2012. It's one of the aspects of owning a business that really get no enjoyment from. There are hundreds of receipts to make sure we have entered correctly into quicken for the year. No matter how hard we try to keep up on this during the year there is always a huge pile to go through before we can fill in the tax packet. Then I need to go through the tax prep packet from the accountant and check all the items that have a depreciation schedule to see if we retired or sold them during 2012 and if so find the selling price so that he can update all of those, then it will be time to work out what new items in 2012 deserve to have a depreciation schedule set up.

I'm tired just thinking about it.

I am so with you. What kills me is that I actually offer tax prep services as part of our business, BUT there is no way I can do my own taxes because it is just too complicated.

I think I do a decent job of staying on top of it during the year (the extra attorney regulations sort of force me to) but still, the minutiae of all the receipts and what got sold/where I drove/etc, just wears me out.

It's just paperwork and documentation in general. It seems like I'm always shredding a metric ton of outdated or irrelevant paperwork and yet no matter how much time I spend I always have another huge pile that needs to be filed and saved, just in case I need to reference it. I'm currently trying to cull things that have been essentially cold filed for 10 years or more. I just had to purchase another four drawer filing cabinet just to house receipts and tax paperwork going back to 2005.

Yup. Me too. And crap, I'm glad you said something 'cause I forgot I still need to do depreciation. Which is doubly stupid in our case 'cause we're a nonprofit and they're not getting written off, but I still have to depreciate.

I have literally cases and cases of receipts to go through. Has anyone used a NeatDesk type product? The IRS will accept electronic receipts under a certain low dollar amount, I think, so I can do some of it through Expensify. But that still leaves piles to be sorted and filed and the important receipts I do have to keep are in the same piles as the coffee receipts.

If it worked well and integrated with my Quickbooks, I would totally pay that $500 to get it all behind me for once. And then maybe I could stay on top of it with their mobile app if I could just get into the habit of snapping and shredding the receipt right away.

I had to install a floor in my attic to get long term storage space. The ladder is still in my closet right now because I know I have more that needs to go up there.

I'm not even thinking about my taxes yet, but I AM purging all my files. I've been through nearly everything in the files and, last night, recycled 30lbs of paper. I've got about 15lbs to shred or burn.

There is still too much in the drawers, though. I really need to JUST LET GO.

I've got so many marketing programs and examples of past work that I just can't seem to give up.

If I were hit by a bus tomorrow, no one on earth would care about all this.

Sigh.

I have a NeatDesk scanner, but there were issues with the Mac Software initially, so I ended up using it as a regular scanner. On the whole it was good, and it will stem the tide in the long run, but it's finding enough time to get it all set up correctly to begin with and then sticking to a good workflow.

Yeah, I think establishing a good workflow is my biggest obstacle right now. That's why I was wondering if something like NeatDesk wouldn't simplify my process. But maybe what I need to is look at what my process should be, and then look at buying tools to suit that, rather than just going out to get stuff and hoping to build my process around the stuff.

Yesterday I had a really productive day on the 15 minute timer. I have lots of really tedious work to do, so it's super helpful to break it up like that.

Today I am sorting through piles of dvds and converting my Roland VS2480 proprietary backup tracks to straight .wavs for use in Pro Tools. Thank heavens for the guy who coded the conversion software.

And I am doing some data entry that got missed somehow. Glad I checked before I sent out my final reports.

How is NeatDesk any more awesome than a regular scanner? I mean, I have to scan all my receipts, but is there something about it that is that much better than just using the scanner in my printer/scanner/fax machine?

I have a scanner at home and the office which can scan 10pp or so at time (or more). But I find with 1 sheet or so, I like the Doxie Go scanner. That has been wonderful and I've traveled with it, scanned items in and transferred the scans to my computer, no problem.