Evernote Makeover Series: How to Do Your Taxes With Evernote

Tips and Stories | 15 Mar 201115 Mar 11 | By Kasey Fleisher Hickey

46 comments

We’re pretty sure that no one actually looks forward to doing their taxes. In fact, most of us tend to feel a sort of panic when we realize that we have to go through a year’s worth of paperwork associated with all of our finances and whittle them down into a few spreadsheets. Let’s take a look at how you’re used to doing taxes, and how to do them the Evernote way.

The Old Way
For those of us who are organized, doing taxes means keeping a file folder with all of our financial statements, documents, pay stubs and investments somewhere in our house. Then, come tax season, pouring these documents out on our kitchen table (or our accountant’s desk) and manually plugging in numbers into our tax forms.

This process is tedious for those who are organized, but take folks who keep these sorts of documents scattered in all sorts of places – some on paper, some online, some in the closet, some at the office – and a long night(s) is guaranteed.

The Evernote Way

Invest in an affordable scanner for your home (a Fujitsu ScanSnap or one of our other scanner partners). Connect it to your Evernote account. Then, every time you get a pay stub, bank statement, or information about your investments/mortgage documents, simply scan it to your Evernote account. You can also clip your online statements to your Evernote account. You can drop all of these documents into a notebook labeled ‘Finances’ or even ’2011 Taxes.’ If you want to be even more specific, you can tag each statement with its type (for example: Bank of America, Pay Stub).

When you’re on the go, make a habit of taking photos of receipts (for example: when you’re on a business trip) and tagging these images with a tag like ‘receipts’ to make sure that they’re organized. Check out Trunk partners like Jotnot and Docscanner, which can improve the quality of your photos and make them even more searchable in Evernote.

Come tax time, you can easily find any and all documents that you need in your Evernote account. Once you’ve completed your taxes, save your paperwork in the same folder by scanning it, or simply dropping the PDF into your notebook. You’ll have your previous year’s tax documents in one place for easy reference the following tax season.

Are you doing your taxes with Evernote? Please share your tips and suggestions in the comments.

This post is part of our Makeover Series. Have you used Evernote to makeover an aspect of your life? Please share your story in the comments.

Learn more about Makeover Series

Dennis Domingo

Evernote is my personal assistant for everything. I scan and upload to Evernote. I love it. Thank you Evernote!
http://www.cordless-phone-update.com Chris

Without encryption any user putting their tax details onto Evernote is running the gauntlet of identify theft and all that may entail.
- John
  
  Hmmmm, yeah I think encryption is probably majorly important so where does that leave me. . . .. .(thinking out loud) ok I can put expenses up (not too concerned about that) but no income, no social security numbers, bank records, financials
  - John
    
    Is there a way to *not* share a folder with the cloud?
    - Kasey Fleisher Hickey
      
      John, yes. You can make your notebook local, meaning that it will not sync with the Evernote service. Hope that helps!
  - John
    
    Oh Okay — yeah that helps a LOT. So keep most of the accounting local in a non-synced local folder! But I still get the full benefit of the tab database searching and organization from home. I’m good with that and buying the scanner today — jumping in two feet first
funkyj

I’m a premium user for a year now…

I’d love to keep all my tax stuff in evernote (e.g. including returns) but worry about the security / identity theft issue.

Kasey’s comment about “local notebook” seems like the best current solution. If I want to have my electronic document be my only archive (throw away the paper, if there ever was any to begin with) then I still need a redudancy solution since the evernote cloud will not be backing up my “local” notebook.

It would indeed be nice to have encrypted notebooks. There is a spectrum of possible features/solutions for such a notebook. One possibility is that it behaves largely like a local notebook but it gets encrypted (only user knows the key) and backed up to the cloud.
- A. User
  
  But then what is the point?
  
  If all of your important documents are just sitting on your local computer…why not just scan them and stick them in a folder.
Fiona

keen to try evernote for scanning and filing documents but i don’t have time to sit and “tag” things. I just want to scan and something/someone else do the rest. Is that possible? I like Mark Harrison’s page numbering idea but still have to manually tag, right?
Also someone in this thread said you don’t have to date. How does evernote do the dating? is the date of scanning or does it read the pdf?
I have a bit of backlog to sort out going back months…
thanks people
Trent

I started using Evernote only a few months back, but business and tax reporting being the main reason.. since then every expense i’ve had goes through the Cannon MFD (which through some googling I managed to integrate with evernote), but more often I do it on the road using the “Turbo Scan” app on iPhone… i’ve only had one reporting period so far and it has reduced time by about 80%!!!
Jisoo

I would like to see something being done for the security issue of putting financial records on the cloud via Evernote. Otherwise I am all for the idea.
http://www.averageintentions.com Andrew

I’ve been using Evernote for taxes the last two years. Couldn’t imagine going back. As well as the receipts themselves, I keep a spreadsheet file in the tagged notes (Salon Receipts, Paint Receipts) to keep a running total. The ability to create note links too is a big help. Attaching a link from receipt to project or purchase is helpful.
http://www.adviceonmedicare.com Chuck

As a CPA, I can tell you that using Evernote to do your Taxes is a no brainer:
1. Connect Evernote to Expensify to make sure you have all your important receipts throughout the year.
2. For cash receipts, use your phone to take snapshots of them before you lose them/throw them away.
3. Use Skitch to “scribble” directly on the receipt’s image as to who was with you, or write notes about it into your Evernote note.
4. Tag everything with what type of expense it is, and by the time you have to do your taxes, everything’s there.
- Laura
  
  Thank you Chuck! I’m a traveling salesman and nearly ever receipt is important . Your explanation is clear and intuitive. Any way to set up totals to integrate with a spreadsheet for totals?
Joy

I learned this from @MichaelHyatt’s blog but inserted in ALL CAPS how to make it work on a Mac:

Evernote can encrypt sensitive data within a note. If you have something within a note that you want to keep private—passwords, financial information, counseling notes, etc.—you can do so by highlighting the data, right-clicking – CONTROL CLICK ON MAC, and selecting “Encrypt selected text.” You will then be prompted to enter a password. In order to view that information in the future, you (or anyone else) will have to enter the password to do so.
Way

Can someone teach me/suggest a solution for me? I am researching my family genealogy. Evernote is wonderful for screenshots of website info that I can later review, save or discard, according to whether applicable to my lineage. I would then like to use selected research and screenshots out of Evernote to attach to my Word documents as sources. But how can I export from Evernote? How do I import the screenshot to my document? Is Evernote designed so that this isn’t possible. Am I limited to using those screenshots only with Evernote documents? If so, I need to find another program for my research? Thanks!

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