Gerry: Claim the Sales Tax.

My car was totalled in May 2011. The party who crashed into me, their insurance company was going to write me a check for the KBB value of my car. So I decided to go look for a new car.

When I walked into the dealership and explained my situation, Gerry (who was the salesperson helping me) gave me some pretty useful information:

“When you get that cash-out check from their insurance company, make sure you also claim the sales tax. That’s something that you have to pay when you get your new car, and since they’re buying your totalled car from you, they should pay you too.”

I’m not sure if this is a State of Illinois thing, or a by-insurance-company thing, but when they wrote out a check, I casually asked about it. And guess what they did?

The wrote me another check for the sales tax.

Hey, it never hurts to ask.

Jason: JotNot for Receipts

Jason is a super talented, smart and very hard-working developer and the owner of Surprise Highway. We share an office, play footsies when his obnoxiously long legs cross the line into my space, and often go to lunch together.

Once at lunch, Jason snapped a picture of his receipt. I asked him what he was going to do with that.

“I scan it using JotNot, and it automatically syncs with Dropbox or Evernote.”

Take a picture of a business expense receipt, save it to the cloud easily, get rid of the receipt. If ever audited, turn over the digital folder. Brilliant.

Other scanning apps don’t make this as easy. I’ve looked. They make you email yourself a PDF version, then download it, then save it manually. At least three extra steps.

So I invested the $0.99 today and am scanning receipts happily, and pitching them.

{And if you’re stuck in 2003, you can also send faxes directly from the app.}

Decluttering is so ahhhhhhh.