We’ve Reached Critical Mass
Dec 22nd, 2007 by Alex
The pile of bills and invoices on my desk piled up high enough that I felt compelled to organize. Aided by a rather eclectic mix of Busta Rhymes, Cake, Hooverphonic, Wyclef Jean, and Thievery Corporation I set out to file everything away properly. I have a system for it already, I had just been neglecting it. It took an hour or so with papers scattered all over the floor, but it’s all done now.
I was on a roll, so I started sorting credit card receipts. I hold onto my credit card receipts for one year. At first glance this seems like a long time, but I have a fair number of business expenses that I need to keep track of. I have to keep a lot of them for tax purposes. After sorting through the receipts it appears that I’ve got about $500 worth of work-related expenses that weren’t reimbursed. That’ll be a nice credit come April.
Since I keep a year’s worth of receipts, one of my annual routines is sorting through the previous year’s credit card slips. I pull out various receipts and recycle the rest. I hold onto the receipts for items that I’ve purchased that are still under warranty (like the clothes dryer) or were a major purchase that I want to hold onto for a bit longer. I shred the receipts that have my full credit card number or my name imprinted.
In 2006, there wasn’t a single vendor that printed the full credit card number on the receipt. This is excellent and much better than last year. Unfortunately there are a lot of vendors that print your name on the receipt, for reasons that I don’t quite understand. I’m not a big fan of my name being directly associated with the items that I buy. Ironically I don’t seem to have a problem with club cards, but that’s another issue for another day.
Most grocery stores and gas stations don’t print your name on their receipts. Shell does it everywhere, whether you paid at the pump or at the register. Exxon doesn’t, except at their location on 301 in Newark. Most of the places that do print the name are using smaller, less expensive POS systems. I would think that even on the most basic credit card machines that this would be a configurable option. Modern thermal printers aren’t inexpensive. The carbon copy dot matrix printers are a telltale sign of cheaper systems, as are the 1-1/2 inch wide receipts with tiny sized text. My thought is that the larger users are more exposed or aware of identity theft and have taken measures to insulate themselves. Or maybe they have more money to spend on the customizations.
Here are all of the vendors that felt it was necessary to include my name on credit card slips.
Cheeburger Cheeburger, Double T Diner, The Greene Turtle, Ledo Pizza, Shell, Off Broadway Shoes, Hoyt’s West Nursery Cinemas, China Wok, Circuit City, Babies ‘R’ Us, Cheeseburger in Paradise, Nottingham’s, Hallmark, IKEA, Pat’s Pizzeria, Beijing, Don Pablos.
That looks like a big list, but when you consider several hundred charges over the course of a year it isn’t too bad. I’m more surprised by the number of large stores than the little places. It won’t stop me from patronizing these businesses, it just means a few extra receipts to shred at the end of the year.
Off to the shredder…
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Hey Alex,
if you like anonymity and organization for your receipts, I can recommend our project Shoeboxed.com to you. The Federal Trade Commission requires that businesses cannot print or electronically send receipts with more than the last 5 digits of a credit card number or any information regarding the expiration date. Every business that acts against it makes itself chargeable! You could act against that…
At Shoeboxed we try to give you a tool at hand which makes your personal finance organization as safe and easy as possible. You can upload your receipts and store them digitally on our platform. We also offer a service where we scan in your receipts, the netflix-way, which is a lot cheaper then letting your accountant do it (and you can export and send it to him afterwards). Additionally to that we give you tools to analyze your spendings. And it’s fun! (sounds strange, but yeah..)
If you have any questions, comments or concerns, feel free to shoot me an email: julian@teamshoeboxed.com
merry christmas!
julian
Is it just me or does anyone else cringe at the name “Cheeburger Cheeburger”? Even Firefox’s spellcheck hates it. It also hates the word “spellcheck” too. FTW.
I toss the receipts as soon as I get them entered into Quicken, which is often weeks after I buy something.
Could be because of incompetent staff. I’ve gotten the wrong CC receipt back a few times only to notice the incorrect name.
yellowjkt: I tried using Quicken or Kiplinger’s (way back) and found it to be more of pain that it was worth.
Lurker: That is an interesting point, I rarely look to see if the number on the signed CC slip matches my card number. I see the amount that matches the itemized receipt and just figure it’s correct.