How to Keep Receipts and Warranties So You Can Find Them

You need a receipt exactly when you can't find it: the kettle breaks after eight months, the shop asks for proof of purchase, and the slip is either gone or faded to a blank strip of paper. The good news is that preventing this doesn't take an accordion folder or tidy drawers. It takes one simple rule: which receipts to keep, in what form and where.

Which receipts are worth keeping

Keeping everything leads straight to the shoebox where nothing can be found. Four groups are enough:

• Appliances and electronics. Anything with a warranty, from headphones to a fridge. Keep the receipt and the warranty card for the whole warranty period.
• Big purchases. Furniture, a bike, expensive clothes and shoes — anything you might want to return or exchange.
• Services with a guarantee. Repairs, window installation, car servicing: work can come with a warranty too.
• Documents for taxes and reimbursements. Medical bills, education, expenses your employer or insurer pays back. Which documents you need and how long to keep them depends on your country — check the local rules.

Grocery and café receipts don't need keeping: the amount is already in your records, and there's rarely anything to return.

Take a photo right away

Receipts printed on thermal paper fade within months — faster in a wallet, in the sun or next to plastic. So the main rule is: photograph it on the day of purchase, while the text is still readable.

To make the photo useful later:

• shoot in good light, the whole receipt, without glare;
• check that the date, shop name, item and amount are visible;
• photograph the warranty card with the shop's stamp and signature;
• if the receipt came by email or in the shop's app, save the PDF — it beats any photo.

It's still worth keeping the paper original for appliances and warranty cards, since a service centre may ask for it. But the photo protects you from the main risk — the text disappearing.

Keep the receipt next to the purchase

The usual problem isn't that the receipt is missing; it's that you can't find it. A "Receipts" album on your phone turns into hundreds of identical, unlabelled photos within a year.

What works is a different logic: the receipt lives where the purchase is recorded. You don't look for "a photo from March" — you look for the purchase, "vacuum cleaner, March 12, $249", and see its receipt and warranty right there. If you track your expenses, there's no better place for receipts: the transaction is already there, you just attach the file.

If you don't track expenses yet, a cloud folder will do, with a naming rule: 2026-03-12 vacuum 249.jpg. With the date first, files sort themselves.

Don't forget a backup

Receipts kept in only one place will one day disappear with it: a broken phone, a deleted account, a full cloud drive. Every few months, make a copy — not just of the transaction list, but of the files themselves.

A quick clean-up once a year

At the start of each year, go through what you've kept:

1. Delete receipts whose warranty and return window have both ended.
2. Set aside documents for tax deductions or reimbursements if you're claiming them this year.
3. Check that every appliance still under warranty has its receipt and warranty card.

Ten minutes a year and the archive stays small.

Example: a warranty repair without the search

In March you buy a vacuum cleaner for $249. You record the expense, photograph the receipt and the warranty card at the till and attach them to that transaction. Nine months later the vacuum stops charging. You search your history for "vacuum" or filter to transactions with attachments — and thirty seconds later you're sending the service centre a photo of the receipt and the warranty. The paper receipt is almost blank by now, but that's no longer a problem.

How to do it in Buddzy

In Buddzy receipts and documents live right inside your transactions, on the Premium plan:

• attach up to 5 files to any transaction: receipt photos, warranty cards and PDFs, up to 10 MB each;
• on a phone you can snap the receipt with the camera straight from the transaction form;
• each file has a type — receipt, warranty or document — and the "With attachments" filter finds every transaction with files in seconds;
• files are stored encrypted and open only from your account;
• the backup in your profile downloads a ZIP with all your data and attachment files, so the copy is complete.

The Free plan includes up to 5 accounts and 200 transactions a month; attachments, auto-fill rules and the family budget come with Premium — see pricing.

Checklist

• Keep receipts for appliances, big purchases, services with a warranty and tax documents.
• Photograph them on the day of purchase, before they fade; save e-receipts as PDF.
• Keep each receipt next to the record of the purchase, not in a general folder.
• Every few months: a backup that includes the files.
• Once a year: delete what you no longer need.

If you're just starting to track expenses, see our guide to the family budget — it covers who records what and how.