Capture receipts the moment you get them

Most lost receipts are not lost in a drawer. They are lost in the half hour after you pay: the slip goes into a coat pocket, the coat goes into the wash, and a month later you are trying to remember what that €23.40 was for.

The fix is not a better filing system. It is a shorter gap between paying and capturing.

The thirty-second rule

Take the photo before you leave the counter, or before the taxi door closes. Thirty seconds is long enough to do it properly and short enough that it never turns into a task you put off.

A few things make it stick:

• Make it the same gesture every time. Open the app, tap the camera, shoot. If the path is different each time, you will skip it when you are in a hurry.
• Flatten the paper. A crumpled receipt photographs badly. Put it on the counter or on your knee, not in the air.
• Get the whole slip in. The total is usually at the bottom, the vendor at the top, and the date somewhere unhelpful in between.
• Keep the paper anyway until you have seen the expense appear and the numbers look right.

What about the ones you forget?

You will forget some. When you do, capture them at the next natural pause, the end of the day or the end of the trip, while you can still remember the context. A receipt with a note saying "client lunch, Anna and Tom" is worth ten without one.

Once a photo is in, nothing else has to happen straight away. The details can be read from it and checked later, which is the whole point: capturing is the only step that has to happen on the spot.