SwitchingReceipts, a shoebox, or memory

How to switch from a drawer of receipts to DeductiBee

The honest version of this page is that some of what you are trying to rebuild is recoverable and some of it is not, and the line between them is worth knowing before you spend an evening on it. Everything below rests on IRS publications rather than on anyone's product documentation, and they are linked at the bottom so you can read them yourself.

a drawer of receipts today
Not a product. There is nothing to export and no account to close, so the question is not how to move a file but what the IRS requires you to be able to show, and how much of that you can still assemble.
Can you get a file out
No
There is nothing to export. What follows is the reconstruction path, and what the IRS says about the parts that cannot be reconstructed.
Before you start

What trips people up moving off a drawer of receipts

  • A charity's receipt will not carry a dollar value. Publication 1771 describes what the organization provides as a description but not the fair market value of contributed property, so the number is always yours to determine and defend.
  • The $500 test aggregates across the year. Several separate bag drop-offs of similar items can pull you into Form 8283 territory together.
  • Percentage-of-new-cost math is explicitly rejected. Publication 526 says formulas such as a percentage of the cost of a new replacement item are not acceptable in determining value.
  • Good used condition or better is a hard gate for clothing and household items, and the one exception, an item not in good used condition for which you deduct more than $500, requires a qualified appraisal attached to the return.
  • An incomplete Form 8283 can cost the whole deduction. The instructions say the deduction generally will be disallowed if you omit required information or submit non-responsive language, and specifically that writing that information is available upon request makes the filing non-responsive.
Step one

Get your records out of a drawer of receipts

One deadline matters here and you cannot move it. For any single non-cash donation of $250 or more, the IRS requires the charity's written acknowledgment to have been received by the earlier of the date you filed the return or its due date including extensions. For the current tax year that window is still open, which is the practical takeaway: get acknowledgments for this year's larger drop-offs now, before you need them. Everything below cites IRS publications as read on August 9, 2026, and none of it is tax advice.

  1. 1Split the pile by tax year, then by thresholdSubstantiation is tiered, so sort before you type anything. Publication 526 sets the tiers at less than $250, at least $250 but not more than $500, over $500 but not more than $5,000, and over $5,000. Note that in working out whether you are over $500 you combine your claimed deductions for all similar items given to any qualified organization during the year, so several small drop-offs can cross the line together.
  2. 2Check each receipt for the facts it is required to showFor a non-cash gift under $250, Publication 526 generally requires a receipt from the organization showing its name and address, the date and location of the contribution, and a description of the property in sufficient detail. A signed blank drop-off slip with no description generally does not meet that on its own.
  3. 3Use the unattended-drop-site route only where it appliesPublication 526 offers one alternative: where it is impractical to get a receipt, for example if you leave property at a charity's unattended drop site, you may instead keep reliable written records for each item. Those records have to include the condition of any clothing or household item and the fair market value at the time of the contribution and how you worked it out. This is a route for receipts you could not get, not for receipts you lost.
  4. 4For anything $250 or more, check the date on the acknowledgmentThis is the step that decides what is unrecoverable. Publication 1771 states the donor must receive the acknowledgment on or before the earlier of the date the return is filed or its due date including extensions. A letter a charity writes for you today generally cannot substantiate a $250-or-more donation on a return you already filed.
  5. 5Rebuild values from thrift and consignment prices, item by itemPublication 561 says used clothing and household items are usually worth far less than what you paid, that valuation does not lend itself to fixed formulas, and that the price buyers actually pay in thrift or consignment shops is an indication of value. Publication 526 is blunter about shortcuts: formulas such as a percentage of the cost of a new replacement are not acceptable. Write down the method next to the number, because Form 8283 asks for it.
  6. 6Attach whatever evidence still existsPublication 526 says you should support your valuation with photographs, canceled checks, receipts from your purchase of the items, or other evidence, and then says not to include any of it with your return. So this is a keep-it-on-file exercise. Old purchase receipts, card statements, and phone photos with their original timestamps are the realistic sources.
  7. 7Decide whether an older year is worth amendingA refund claim generally has to be filed within three years of filing the original return or two years of paying the tax, whichever is later. That window does not relax the acknowledgment timing above, so amending generally helps where the paperwork existed and the deduction simply was not claimed, rather than where a $250-or-more acknowledgment was never obtained in time.
Step two

Bring the file into DeductiBee

DeductiBee works out what the file is rather than asking you, so these three steps are the same whatever you exported from.

  1. 8Open Import in DeductiBee and pick your fileImport lives in onboarding and in Settings afterwards, so it is there whether you are new or have been using the app for a year. Choose the file from Files, iCloud Drive, or whatever app it landed in.
  2. 9Check the preview before anything is savedDeductiBee reads the file, works out which columns are which, and shows you what it found: how many donations, which tax years, and how each condition tier maps onto Like new, Good, and Fair. Nothing is written to your records until you accept that preview.
  3. 10Confirm the organizations it rebuiltMost exports list a charity name on every row rather than a separate list of organizations, so DeductiBee reconstructs the list from those rows and shows it to you to confirm or merge. Re-importing the same file later does not duplicate anything.

Importing your own history is free on every tier, permanently, and so is exporting your raw data again later. Neither is behind the paywall, on principle: your records are yours.

The honest part

What comes with you, and what does not

No migration is lossless. Knowing which half is which before you start is the difference between a move and a surprise.

Comes with you

  • Dated drop-off receipts and acknowledgment letters, where you have them
  • Charity name and address, which the receipt is required to show
  • The date and location of the contribution, from the receipt
  • Whatever description was written on the slip, even if it is only a bag count
  • Original purchase receipts, canceled checks and card statements showing what an item cost and roughly when
  • Photographs taken at the time, including camera-roll images whose timestamps establish the date

Does not come with you

  • A written acknowledgment for a $250-or-more donation that was never obtained before the return was filed or due. A letter written now generally does not cure a closed year
  • Per-item descriptions that were never written down, since many drop-off slips carry neither a description nor a value
  • The condition of each item at the time you gave it, which the records are required to state and which cannot be observed once the goods are gone
  • Cost or adjusted basis and the approximate acquisition date for goods owned for years, which Form 8283 asks for on items over $500
  • Photographs never taken, which Publication 526 names first among the evidence you should have used
FAQ

Questions about leaving a drawer of receipts

Can I claim a donation if I lost the receipt?
It depends on the amount and on why you have no receipt. Publication 526 offers a reliable-written-records route, but conditions it on it being impractical to get a receipt in the first place, giving an unattended drop site as the example. It does not address a receipt you had and lost, and we are not going to tell you it does. For anything at or above $250 the timing rule below is the binding constraint.
Can I ask the charity for a letter now, for a donation I made last year?
You can ask, and it may be useful. What it generally cannot do is substantiate a $250-or-more donation on a return you already filed: Publication 1771 requires the acknowledgment to be received by the earlier of the filing date or the due date including extensions. That is why the most valuable thing on this page is the advice to collect acknowledgments for this year's donations now.
How do I value things I gave away months ago?
Publication 561 points at what buyers actually pay in thrift and consignment shops as an indication of value, and Publication 526 rules out percentage-of-new-cost formulas. Our donation value guide gives ranges by item and condition with the source shown next to each one, and the calculator totals a donation in the browser. Record the method alongside the number, because Form 8283 asks for it.
Is any of this worth doing if I do not itemize?
Possibly not for the deduction itself: Publication 526 and the IRS topic page both describe itemizing on Schedule A as generally required. There is a charitable deduction for non-itemizers arriving for tax year 2026, and we are deliberately not quoting figures for it until final IRS guidance is confirmed. Keeping the records costs little and the rules may make them worth having.
Method

Where these steps came from

There is no other company's product to check here: what you are leaving is already yours. What the steps above rest on is the IRS guidance on valuing and substantiating a donation, checked on August 9, 2026 and linked below so you can read it rather than take our word for it.

What we could not confirm

  • Whether the IRS accepts donor records written after the fact for a sub-$250 gift where a receipt was obtainable but lost. Publication 526 conditions that route on it being impractical to get a receipt and does not address a lost one, and we found no IRS page addressing the lost-receipt case directly.
  • Whether a charity will reissue a receipt for a past year, and whether a reissued receipt is treated as timely. No IRS page we fetched addresses this, and Publication 1771 notes that an organization that does not acknowledge a contribution incurs no penalty, so there is no obligation on their side.
  • Whether the 2026 non-itemizer charitable deduction changes any of this, and this one matters enough to say twice. Publication 526 for 2025 and the IRS topic page, both as read on August 9, 2026, describe itemizing on Schedule A as generally required. Final IRS guidance for tax year 2026 was not something we could locate, so do not read anything here as telling a non-itemizer that keeping records is pointless.
Keep reading

Next

Moving from something else

Bring it all with you

Your donation history should outlive the app you kept it in.

Import what you already have, value what you gave next with a source attached, and export the paperwork when you file.

Nothing to lose in the move

Import is free, re-importing the same file does not duplicate anything, and you can export your raw data again whenever you want.

Records that stay yours

Everything lives on your iPhone, syncing only through your own private iCloud database.

DeductiBee on the App StoreFree to start, with 20 new item entries a year. Import and raw export are free on every tier.