Back in the day, maintaining an organized expenses spreadsheet meant passing a hard copy printout between employees and hoping for the best. Ink got smudged, receipts got stapled, and if you were lucky, everyone got reimbursed for their expenditures in a somewhat-timely manner (assuming the spreadsheet didn’t get lost).

Flash forward to 2013, when cloud-based accounting software has made it easier than ever to track expenses, generate reports, and create budgets – all without ever having to hit the print button.

The key to creating a flawless expense report is to accurately track your expenses. If you have a solid system in place, generating a report based on those tracked expenses is an absolute breeze. Here are a few of our favorite ways to ensure accurate expense tracking:

Shoeboxed

In the above scenario, one of the biggest pains of creating hard copy expense reports was having to staple piles of receipts to the report itself. Well, no more!

Shoeboxed is a receipt scanning service that digitizes hard copy documents and maintains them in a cloud-based account that can be accessed from anywhere. Every individual receipt is transformed into a digital document that can be searched for by date, location, or individual item.

You can also keep track of receipts when you’re out of the office with the Shoeboxed app for iOS7 and Android. Snap a picture of each receipt and watch as your account is instantly updated with the new information.

When it’s time to create an expenses spreadsheet, Shoeboxed does it for you. Create one-click expense reports by selecting the applicable expenses within your Shoeboxed account. You can then download the spreadsheet, email it to your colleagues or employees for editing, or upload it to a secure, shared server.

Budgt

Budgt for iPhone is an app that lets you track your spending via virtual spreadsheets. This option is great for those concerned with privacy because Budgt doesn’t require any banking or other personal information. Simply buy the app for $0.99 and begin tracking expenses. You’ll have a handheld digital spreadsheet that will help you manage your finances and stick to your budget.

Freshbooks

On the other end of the spectrum, Freshbooks is cloud-based accounting software with the ability to link directly to your personal or business bank account. Freshbooks intuitively knows which items should be added to your expenses spreadsheet. It tracks income as well as expenditures, and displays the data on your account dashboard in the form of charming graphs and easy-to-read charts.

Freshbooks also offers a variety of reporting options that can be customized by client, invoice, expense category, profit and loss, and tax summaries. Simply click the “expense report” option to view and download an instant snapshot of your expenses for the month, quarter or year. You can also assign categories to certain expenses, making reporting come tax time a cinch!

Whichever application you choose to help create your weekly, yearly or monthly expense spreadsheet, the benefits of going digital are clear. So forget the paper print out and scrap the stapled mess – use Shoeboxed, Budgt, Freshbooks or the app of your choice to digitally track your expenses.