How do you keep track of all your debit card receipts? When its time to balance my acct I can't find have of my debit card receipts (they are suppose to be in my purse). Do you have any suggestions?
By Onesummer
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I posted this tip a while back and was advised that it could be dangerous so I had it deleted. I am showing it again as I have actually seen these used in a restaurant within a foot of the public. I can see how it could be dangerous though especially if you have children in the home. So, if you make this, please put it in an out of the way place so no one can fall on it.
Take a piece of wood and drive a thin nail through the center. Each time you use your card, put the receipt on the nail. It works great for us in keeping up with our receipts and they are in date order making it easy to check with the bank statement.
After balancing my statement, I staple them together and put them in a drawer. I probably don't need to keep holding on to them but it's just easy to do.
I have a special place in my purse just for debit card receipts. When I get home from shopping I take them out and place them on the counter with a noticable weight on them so they don't fall and get lost. When I finish putting away my purchases I immediately write them in my checkbook and deduct for current balance.
I carry my checkbook and checkbook register in my billfold. That is also where I carry my debit cards, which I use almost exclusively rather than cash. My greatest fear was that I'd miss posting the sale in my checkbook, so what I do is after the sale is completed, I place my receipt in my checkbook register. At the end of the day or the next morning, I post the receipts and then place the receipts into an expandable envelope where I have 3 x 5 cards with tabs showing the day, 1 for the first, 2 for the second, etc.
I access my checking account online every day so I can then mark my register with a highlighter when the receipts have cleared. I also use Quicken on my computer so I have a duplicate check register there. My husband also uses his debit card almost exclusively. So every evening or morning he gives me his receipts which he had placed in his billfold where money would normally go.
With this system, we never overdraw and I know to the penny how much money is in the bank at least once a day. If I do run into a problem, I can check what's online against what's in my check registers. There have been times when a receipt has gotten lost or I've double posted something. With the "filters" and being able to "sort" the data, I can find mistakes within minutes.
I've used this system for at least 10 years or more and it works great for me.
At the end of the month, I take all the old receipts from the envelope and rubberband them together and start the month over. Also, when it comes time to reconcile my account with the bank statement, I just use Quicken to reconcile and I'm done in minutes.
As I get receipts I put them in my wallet. Every few days I remove them from the wallet and put them in an envelope. This way they are all in one place, ready to check against my statement.
If you don't want to wait a month to get your statement, view your account online and reconcile more often (like weekly) so you don't have to keep receipts as long.
I fold all of mine and tuck them up under my checkbook register that I keep in a checkbook cover and when the statement comes simply balance the statement and then shred the receipts and throw them away.
A long time ago, a lover taught me this, and it has never failed me. Carry your checkbook with you, even when you use the debit card. Every time you make a transaction, whether by check or by the card, record it. Yep, it may annoy the person behind you in line- but make that entry into your check register anyway! You will never miss a lost receipt that way, and you will remember every transaction. Save the receipts by any method that you choose, to double-check, but if you treat this like putting on a seatbelt (every time, all the time), you won't make any mistakes.
We have a small wicker basket for receipts that we keep on a shelf in our kitchen.
I hate all those tiny paper slips, so I input each day's transactions into my computer's word-processing program -- and trash the slips. It's absolutely no hardship doing so since I'm on my computer twice a day anyway. I save that record, and almost all my others, to a removable flash drive.
This becomes a wonderfully handy history of all my debit card use since I began. (Like where and when I might have taken the wife for an anniversary or birthday dinner? -- Lest she forgets).
When my monthly bank statement arrives it's very simple to cross-check -- just in case you forgot or misplaced one. I think that's happened to me twice in the past four years. (It helps to be anal!)
I wrap my receipts around the card and immediately put it back in my wallet. This gets tricky where they check your receipt at the door, here I put my card away at the register and I put the receipt away in the car before leaving to avoid accidentally losing my wallet, card or receipt. Once I have gotten home and finished unpacking my items, or, at the latest before I go to bed each night, I enter them into Quicken. This is a program that I consider well worth the money (when I have to purchase it) for tracking where our money is being spent, as well as reconciling the accounts and I can usually get away with only upgrading every 2 years. Many times, this is given to me by someone who has just bought the newer version. In the event I do misplace a receipt, the onestep update downloads the transaction for me to review. The simplicity of viewing where our money is going has really helped us realize where money was being wasted. This has worked wonders for us for almost 20 years now.
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