85 - 3 things I am doing this month to organize my files and tax documents

Organize 365 Podcast

Lisa Woodruff

Lisawoodruff, Education, Self-improvement, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

1. Collecting tax documents.

Collecting, organizing and preparing tax documentation is overwhelming. I think it is because the information you need comes to you in a trickle through the mail, your email inbox and your own receipts - little by little - every day for weeks like Chinese water torture.

So I have come up with a few ways to alleviate my anxiety and take the torture out of tax preparation.

Have a file, box or basket to put ALL incoming tax information.
Make a master list AFTER you file your taxes this year of the documents you needed to find. Above is a picture of my list.
Set aside a 3-4 hour chunk of time to organize and prepare your taxes in one sitting. I actually look forward to this day. :)

2. Purging all my files & creating a color coded filing system.

After I file our taxes in early February I purge our filing cabinet. The first time I really did this it took days and I was able to get rid of 80% of what I had.

Download my FREE Printable - To Shred or Not to Shred

So I thought and thought and came up with this simpler, yet still cool, system. I already had colored hanging files {which I LOVE!!} and I assigned each category in my filing cabinet a color.

Then I purged each file as I put the contents in the new colored file.

3. Systematizing my home based business income & expenses for 2016.

Tax time has been a breeze the past few years because I have kept up with my business taxes each month.

Having been in business for myself for over 20 years, I know how hard it is to keep everything organized. This year I disciplined myself to do my finances in my business all by myself DAILY!

Each month I would reconcile and do my tax prep on the 1st of the month. I actually started to look forward to it because I have created a checklist and form to fill out each month so I didn't miss any expenses.

Each month I knew how much I actually made. I was able to continually refine my process and reduce my expenses.

This year I had my graphic designer make my pages in to adorable printables and they are available in my ETSY shop both as a digital download or printed with divider tabs in a DUO Binder.

Click here to read the full post, download the printable and enter the giveaway!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Organized 365 Podcast. My name is Lisa Woodruff and I'm a professional
0:07.1	organizer and blogger in Cincinnati, Ohio. I want to help you get your home
0:11.8	organized and help you organize life stages and unexpected events.
0:17.0	So sit back, relax, and let's get organized.
0:21.0	One of the things I've noticed personally and as I work with my clients as a professional
0:27.0	organizer is the more that you dive into one area of organization,
0:31.0	the more you can continually refine that system.
0:34.9	So today, I want to talk to you about how I organize my paper files and my tax documents,
0:40.2	tell you some of the ways that I am refining my systems this year as I continue to refine them year after year
0:46.0	and I'm also going to talk to you about a system that I tried last year that really didn't work.
0:50.9	So today I'm going to talk to you about three things. One is how do you
0:54.9	collect the tax documents that you have like how do you organize them and
0:58.5	when do you do them and how do you make it so it's not like Chinese water
1:01.8	torture getting that done. And then second I
1:04.9	want to talk to you about how to purge your filing cabinet like if this is the year that you're
1:09.4	going to purge your actual filing cabinet what is the easiest way to do that?
1:14.0	And then third, how I have systematized and streamlined my home-based business income and expense
1:20.1	process over the last 20 years.
1:22.4	And it took me the whole 20 years.
1:25.1	All right so let's start with the easiest thing and but maybe the most pressing
1:29.4	thing right now for you which is collecting your tax documents. I'm the kind of person. I would much rather
1:36.5	do all of the laundry on Sunday. Give me 7 to 10 loads to do, that is fine, but I don't want to do a load of laundry every single day like that is torture for me I want to do
	...

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