Tagged “records”
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What a receipt reveals
A receipt carries a card fragment, a location, a time and a purchase history. That has handling consequences whichever way you store the thing.
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Records you don't actually hold
An order history is not your archive. Access ends with the account, the subscription or the relationship, and it takes the documents with it.
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Which date a record belongs to
A single purchase can carry five defensible dates. Pick one for filing, record the rest, and never let the file's own timestamp be the answer.
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How long to keep things
This site won't tell you the number, because it isn't one number. What it can give you is a scheme that works whatever the number turns out to be.
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Refunds, deposits and part-payments
One purchase can produce four documents and three amounts. The record has to describe the sequence, because no single artefact in it does.
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Paper, digital, or both
A scan is a photograph of the information, not the information. Knowing what each format preserves and silently drops decides which one you need.
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Test your filing by trying to break it
You find out whether a records system works when someone asks for something. Ask yourself first, on a random month, and time how long it takes.
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Recurring charges leave the thinnest trail
Subscriptions produce no paper, no capture moment, and no memory. The record has to be built from the arrangement rather than the transaction.
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Why thermal receipts fade
There is no ink. The image is a chemical reaction in a coating, and it can be undone by heat, light, friction, solvents and ordinary plastic.
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Receipts you keep for reasons other than tax
Warranty, insurance, returns and proof of ownership run on their own clocks. Some of them outlast every other reason you keep a record.
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What makes a receipt useful later
Six fields decide whether a record is worth anything in two years. Five are printed for you. The one that matters most is never on the paper.
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When one receipt covers two things
A single total hiding two different purposes is the hardest record to reconstruct. Note the split at the till; the paper will never do it for you.
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Records two people share
Two people filing into one system produces gaps neither can see. The fix is an owner per class, one destination, and a habit of saying what you did.
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Writing it down at the time
A note made at the moment is a different kind of thing from one made later. Not more honest — just made when the fact was still available to you.
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The expense claim as a records problem
A claim sends your records into somebody else's system. Keep your own copy of both the receipt and the claim, because they establish different things.
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Reconstructing a year you didn't record
You can rebuild most of what money did from statements, portals and a calendar. What you can't rebuild is why — and inference must never be filed as fact.
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Where paper survives
Paper doesn't decay at one rate. It decays at the rate its surroundings dictate, and a drawer indoors beats a wallet by a margin nothing else can close.