Capturing, managing and automating receipts & invoice collection using Evernote

Newsletter Housekeeping: Still can’t talk about a new shiny thing that’s happening, hopefully next week, but there’s new versions of Evernote for PC & Mac (10.61.10) out so when the new shiny thing is switched on, you’ll have it! Download now or wait for the in-app updates.

I’ve been capturing, storing and finding receipts in Evernote for quite a while now and I’ve got a little system of workflows going on that I want to share with you and maybe you can implement some of it into your own workflows.

And, no tagging because tagging = chaos!

Capturing receipts and invoices in Evernote

Evernote is great at capturing things, it’s probably one of its most endearing features. You can get stuff into Evernote in many different ways.

This is how I deal with receipts and invoices.

Scanning receipts and invoices

I don't get many paper receipts and invoices anymore, most tend to get emailed to me but for things like car repairs and household jobs I still get a piece of paper.

I use the Evernote app on my phone to scan this in.

If you use the ‘Auto’ function of the Evernote camera it will find the whole receipt by just hovering your phone above the paper. You can also add multiple pages if it’s a big receipt.

Just save the scan into Evernote. I stick receipts in a “Receipts Dump” notebook but more on that later.

Using an Evernote Import Folder

For ad-hoc receipts and invoices that usually land in my Inbox I use an Evernote Import Folder.

This connects a folder on my computer to notebook in Evernote so whatever I put in the computer folder automatically gets imported into my ‘Receipts Dump” notebook.

This works very smoothly. I can save PDFs and docs into the folder and within a few seconds they are showing in Evernote.

One great thing about Evernote version 10 software is that it bought import folders to Macs so everyone can now use them.

Automated email forwarding

For regular receipts and invoices, I’ve setup a workflow automation in my email software.

I use the Postbox email client and even though it’s a little old skool it has a bunch of features that webmail and other apps don't seem to have.

One of those features is called ‘Quick Post’.

What is does is give you the ability to quickly forward an email and at the same time add extra information before or after the subject line.

In this example I can very quickly forward an email to Evernote and at the end of the subject line appears ‘@Receipts Dump’. This means the forwarded email, including attachments lands in the correct Evernote notebook.

I wrote about how I use Evernotes email-in feature a few months ago.

Now for the clever bit.

In Postbox I can activate a ‘Quick Post’ using a filter.

So, what this workflow does is it waits for an invoice or receipt to appear in my Inbox and then if the filter matches the email with certain criteria, like the subject line or who it’s from, a ‘Quick Post’ is automatically fired to forward the email to Evernote and the email is then moved to my Bills and Receipts email folder.

I don't have to do anything. Receipts arrive and land in Evernote without a click.

Have a look and see if your email software has similar features or you could use something like Zapier, IFTTT or Zoho Flow to automate your workflow.

Processing and storing receipts and invoices in Evernote

I have a stack called ‘Receipts’ and in that stack are a bunch of notebooks for each year and this is where I keep all my reciepts and invoices.

It makes sense.

The most important notebook is ‘Receipts Dump‘ as this is where I do all my processing.

Once a week or twice a month I’ll go into this notebook, sort through everything, rename the notes and move them to the correct ‘Receipts [YEAR]’ notebook.

Sticking to a naming convention

This is something I’m pretty strict about and it helps me find things at a later date.

I use the naming convention of “WHO WHAT WHEN”.

So, a receipt would be called:

“Canva Invoice Sept 2023”

“Inoreader Receipt Aug 2023”

I don’t deviate from this at all. If I need to store any other information about the bill then it goes in the note itself.

This means I can find invoices and receipts quickly. I could easily search the ‘Receipts 2022’ notebook and find all of my Canva invoices.

That’s it! That’s how I manage bills. For anything that needs paying it tends to stay in my Inbox until its paid and then I move it to Evernote so everything stored in the elephant is paid.

And, not a tag in sight!

How do you manage receipts in Evernote?

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon