Don’t feel lost or alone when it comes to filing your invoices, help is at hand.

I have seen many ways people file and reference purchase invoices. After years of doing this job the one way I prefer to file invoices is alphabetical and newest to the top of each supplier. I prefer this way as it is easier for my clients and their accountants to look for and find an invoice. Once you have processed an invoice mark it with a highlighter, this demonstrates that you have processed the invoice and will help you to avoid double processing the same invoice.

Should you choose a paperless way to store your purchase invoices then create a good filing system on your PC and ensure that it is backed up off site, maybe using a cloud solution like Google drive.
Create a folder of your financial year, create individual folders for each supplier, within those individual supplier folders create one more folder called processed. This last folder should only be populated with all digital invoices that have been processed. Invoices not yet processed will sit outside of this folder waiting to be processed and moved.

If items are bought on a credit card I would match the receipts to the credit card statement and then staple those receipts to the credit card statement, once they have been processed.

Sales invoices are easy as these should be numbered, filing them in number order is perfect. If you are using different software to produce your sales invoices then process them and use the highlighter method described above.

• Tip 1 Sort your invoices into supplier order. It is easier to process invoices from the same supplier as you don’t waste time searching in different places, on the invoice, for dates and invoice numbers.
• Tip 2 Use fullscap leaver arch files to file your invoices, Q-connect or 5 star files are cheap if bought in bulk, check out Amazon or even your local stationers.
• Tip 3 There is no excuse for losing your historic invoices, seriously look at backing your invoices up on the cloud. Google drive app on the phone allows you to take a photo of the receipt and then save it to your drive. Other than that there is cloud software like Receipt bank which can help store and record receipts and then it posts it direct to your software, if you are using Xero, Kashflow or Sage One.
• Tip 4 HMRC have approved the use of digitally stored invoices.