A petty cash receipt form is the internal voucher you fill out every time someone takes bills from the office cash box, and doing it correctly means recording the date, exact amount, payee, business purpose, expense category, and signatures at the moment the cash changes hands, then attaching the vendor receipt. That slip is what turns an anonymous handful of cash into a documented, deductible business expense.
Fields the Form Must Capture
The IRS requires supporting documents for business expenses to show the amount paid, the date, and the business purpose.1Internal Revenue Service. Publication 583 – Starting a Business and Keeping Records A usable form goes a bit further and captures the operational details a bookkeeper needs weeks later:
- Date the cash was actually handed out, not the date the form was completed after the fact.
- The exact dollar-and-cent amount. Round numbers invite suspicion during reconciliation.
- Payee or merchant. “Office Depot” or “USPS” tells the bookkeeper something useful; “store” does not.
- Business purpose, written as a short description like “printer ink for accounting department” or “postage for client invoices.” This is the field the IRS actually cares about.
- Expense category or general ledger account code, such as office supplies or postage, so the bookkeeper isn’t guessing.
- Signature of the person receiving the cash.
- Signature of the fund custodian confirming the disbursement was authorized.
- Approver signature where company policy requires one, typically above an internal dollar threshold.
Staple the original store receipt, invoice, or register tape to the completed form. The IRS lists petty cash slips alongside canceled checks, invoices, and credit card slips as acceptable supporting documents.1Internal Revenue Service. Publication 583 – Starting a Business and Keeping Records The slip shows what the company paid; the vendor receipt proves what the company got. Together they make the expense defensible.
Filling It Out at the Moment of the Transaction
Write the date and the exact amount before any cash leaves the box. Filling in those two fields first prevents the common problem of someone pocketing the money and forgetting to finish the form. Then identify the merchant clearly enough that a person who wasn’t involved could understand the transaction months later.
The business purpose line trips people up most often. Write what the purchase is for, not just what it is. “Stamps” is a product. “Postage for quarterly client statements” is a purpose. That distinction is what makes the expense hold up in a review.
If the purchase includes sales tax, separate the tax from the base price on the form. Some businesses can recover sales tax paid, and your accountant needs the breakdown to categorize the expense properly. When the vendor receipt doesn’t itemize the tax, write it out by hand on the form and note that you calculated it from the receipt total.
Both the recipient and the custodian should sign the form at the time of the transaction. Collecting signatures days later weakens the control and creates gaps an auditor will notice. Where company policy requires manager approval above a certain dollar amount, route the form for that signature before releasing the cash when possible. For genuinely urgent small purchases, get the approval signature the same day.
What Petty Cash Should and Shouldn’t Cover
The fund exists for small, routine expenses that would be impractical to run through a purchase order or corporate card: office supplies, postage, small repair parts, coffee and breakroom items, parking fees, minor shipping costs. If the expense is large enough to make you pause, it probably shouldn’t come out of the cash box.
Set a per-transaction cap in your company policy. Many businesses draw the line at $25 or $50 per purchase, though the number depends on your fund size and industry. Expenses that should never flow through petty cash include employee wages or bonuses, travel advances, personal loans to employees, and any purchase large enough to require competitive bids under your procurement policy. Using the fund for these creates classification problems in the books and can trigger uncomfortable questions during an audit.
Where to Get the Form
You have three practical options. Pre-printed petty cash receipt booklets are available at office supply stores, typically with carbon copies so the custodian keeps a duplicate automatically. These run between fifteen and thirty dollars for a pad of 50 to 100 slips.
Downloadable templates in Excel or Google Sheets cost nothing. A spreadsheet lets you add your company logo, customize the expense categories to match your chart of accounts, and auto-calculate running totals. The tradeoff is losing the physical carbon copy, so you’ll need a filing system for printed or scanned versions.
Building your own form in a word processor works just as well. The IRS does not prescribe a specific form layout for expense documentation. As long as the form captures the fields above and matches the attached vendor receipt, the format doesn’t matter.
Logging, Replenishing, and Reconciling
After each transaction, the custodian records the receipt in a petty cash ledger, either a physical notebook or a spreadsheet, showing a running balance so anyone can tell at a glance how much cash should be in the box. When the fund runs low (many companies replenish at roughly 25 to 50 percent remaining), the custodian gathers all the slips, totals them by expense category, and submits them for replenishment. The replenishment check is written for the exact amount spent, restoring the fund to its original fixed balance.
At least once a month, or every time the fund is replenished, count the physical cash, add up all the receipt slips, and confirm the two together equal the original fund balance. Small discrepancies appear regularly: incorrect change, a receipt behind the drawer, a rounded disbursement. Accountants call this account Cash Over and Short and use it to absorb the difference. If shortages become a pattern or the amounts grow, that’s a control problem that goes beyond loose change and needs management attention.
A surprise count by someone other than the custodian is a good practice to build into the routine. Periodic review by a supervisor or accountant discourages carelessness and catches problems early.
How Long to Keep the Forms
Petty cash slips and their attached vendor receipts are tax records. The IRS expects you to keep them available for inspection and to be able to explain any item on your return.1Internal Revenue Service. Publication 583 – Starting a Business and Keeping Records Expenses paid from petty cash are deductible like any other ordinary business expense, but only if you can document them. A bare claim of “we spent $40 on supplies” without a receipt or voucher is exactly what gets disallowed in an examination.
The general retention rule is three years from the date you filed the return or its due date, whichever is later. If you underreport gross income by more than 25 percent, the IRS can look back six years. If no return was filed, there is no time limit.2Internal Revenue Service. How Long Should I Keep Records? Three years is the floor for most businesses; six is the safer practice.
Store the forms and receipts chronologically by replenishment cycle. Whether you use a physical filing cabinet or scanned digital copies, the goal is the same: if an auditor asks for every petty cash transaction from March of last year, you can produce them without a scavenger hunt. Digital storage is fine as long as the scans are legible and backed up. The IRS does not require you to keep the original paper if you have an accurate electronic copy.