Why Your Bookkeeper Hates Paper Receipts (And What to Do Instead)
Paper receipts are a bad archive. Thermal ink fades. The bag tears. You cannot search a grocery sack.
What actually goes wrong
Your accountant does not hate you. They hate reconstructing a year from scraps.
- Dates disappear. CRA wants the original. A faded till slip is not a record.
- Mixed slips get split in someone's head — fuel and a car wash become two guesses.
- The pile arrives in March. The year already happened.
A receipt is proof you spent money. If you cannot produce it, the deduction is the thing at risk — not the paper.
What to do instead
Capture the slip the day it happens. Photo, forwarded email, or a PDF. Keep the original file. File vendor, date, total, and tax while you still remember the job.
Year-end then is a pack: search, export, hand over a link. Not a kitchen table covered in faded thermal paper.
This is not tax advice. Keep what your accountant asks for. We just stop the pile from becoming the product.