Interview! Sterling Davis, Atlanta’s “Trap King”
April 14, 2018
Interview! Jennifer Blough, Compassion Fatigue Expert and Author
April 21, 2018
Happy Tax Day! I hope everyone made the deadline with filing their personal taxes. Mid April is a time that I dread every year. Many of us need to track our mileage, expenses, and a million health certificates for all of the cats we trapped over the past year.
How do we know what to keep and use and what not to? We have concerns as individuals, but many of us also need to know the guidelines for organizations. Below are some of my record keeping tips to help make the tracking process easier for years to come.
1. If you are a paper person, use colored folders and set them up before you need to fill them up.
Make sure you have enough space for storage. How many of us have over-flowing filing cabinets, making it impossible to put another folder and more papers in the cabinet? If you are a mobile person, take pictures or screen shots of all receipts and store them in a Google doc dashboard (thanks to Laura Burns from Habitat for Cats and HubCats for this great tip!).
2. Categories
Categories could include “vet records for colonies” (you can also use CatStats.org for this too — click here to learn more about CatStats in my interview with Bryan Kortis), “supply receipts,” “mileage,” and any other items you use. Make sure you stay true to your categories.
3. Document Retention
You should keep the paperwork on the cats that you care for. Even if you just foster them for a short period of time and a copy of the paperwork has gone on with another organization or to the adoptive home, I still think it is good to keep copies of all vet records for the recommended time frame in the link below.
Standard documents should be stored based on these guidelines. Here is a good listing:
4. Purge, Purge, Purge
If you haven’t touched it in six months, you should trash it or move it out of your active filing system. For files like past years’ tax returns that we need to keep, but don’t need immediate access to, the best thing to do is to get large storage tubs (clear plastic is best so you can see what it in the box). Label the box “Stacy’s tax years xxxx-xxxx” and place it in a way so that everyone can see that label. Only keep the documents you need to keep. After a certain number of years, you only need to keep the returns, not all the supporting information.
5. Shredding and Protecting Your Information
What needs to be shredded and what doesn’t? Shredding isn’t cheap and I have burned out many of those small shredders that you can get at office supply stores. We have to be so careful about identity theft and credit card numbers, so if there is any personal information on the paper, then shred it or protect it. The same applies to having private information scanned. Going paperless is great, but make sure the data is protected with passwords, then have a quarterly purge party at home and at your organization to make sure you are keeping on top of things.
One idea to handle the cost of shredding information is to have a fundraiser with a shredding company. If you hold a “shred day” and help promote it, the company may do your shredding for free. If you have any questions about shredding, feel free to reach out to shredabox.com , which is run by Laura Heffernan and her family. Laura was my first podcast guest! We are quickly approaching 250 shows, but if you want to go back and listen to our very first episode, check it out at here. Laura did some amazing work in Lowell, MA, helping thousands of cats and kittens and creating a humane community for cats. Here is a link to another podcast talking about the Lowell, MA project.
Good luck with your paperwork efforts and congratulations on making it through another year!
