(This post goes really well with this one!)

OK, ’fess up. Do you have a pile of wrinkled, stained, faded receipts sitting around your office that you’re supposed to do something with? It’s time to take control with these receipt management tools.

All things considered, my favorite receipt management tool is still Shoeboxed, even though there are less expensive alternatives out there. Shoeboxed will process your electronic and paper receipts and other documents, starting at about $10/month for up to 50 scans. There’s no feeling more wonderful than stuffing an envelope with all those random receipts and shipping them off to North Carolina to be someone else’s problem. Shoeboxed’s technology reads the receipts, categorizes them, adds them up, lets you tag them and can merge them together into a super-tidy expense report that will make any accountant happy.

I’m puzzled by the anonymous awesomeness of Wave Accounting. How can no one know about this service? Its competitors charge money – in some cases lots of money – for the same types of features: financial institution account management (personal and business), invoicing, receipt management and budget snapshots. It offers payroll services as well for the simple (and cheap) price of $5/employee, and you can seamlessly integrate credit card payments for very reasonable rates. And yet, I rarely run across anyone else who uses it.

Perhaps the challenge is its lack of integrations into other systems. You can import all your financial accounts into the system and hook up with Etsy, Shoeboxed and PayPal, but that’s about it.

Expensify deserves a mention here as well. This app not only simplifies your personal receipt management but can revolutionize a small business’ expense approval procedures. Each employee submits appropriate receipts, and a manager can approve expense reports easily and quickly with just a few clicks.