Those of us in business know it can be a challenge to keep tabs on everything we need to so we can increase our expenses to go against our income for taxes. It definitely takes a conscious effort just to do it. Yet, it doesn’t have to be the struggle it seems to be with a few tips behind you.

One, purchase a small file pocket of some kind to toss your receipts in. You can decide if you want to carry it around with you in your car or not. In any case, having a place to throw them in and knowing that’s what it’s for is a lot easier to deal with than throwing them in a box where you might throw lots of other things.

Two, if you’re always losing receipts, a great idea is to take a picture of them with your smartphone. Many accountants do that for themselves. It doesn’t matter what a receipt is for or how it looks; it’s having a record of it that makes the difference. Having it on your phone means you can always access it, which means you can either email it or save it to your computer at a later time.

Three, you need to have something relatively small to keep with you that might not only help you in charting your mileage but to take business notes if you need to. I recommend a spiral 3×5 index card system. Usually they come with 50 sheets in them. Since they’re lined it’s easy to use them for the notes and since it’s spiral bound it’s hard to lose any of the pages.

Four, do you have places you go often? If so, you can either write these places down in your notebook or calendar, and then track their distance once. After that, all you have to do is write down the name of the place you went and you’ll already know how many miles you’ve driven. No one cares where you go; they’re more interested in the mileage itself.

These four ways might seem a bit simplistic, but the truth is that most things that are cumbersome have simple ways to make them easier. Give them a try and let us know how they work for you.