Keeping up with expense reimbursement

[Anonymous]

I'm looking for tips on managing work expenses to be submitted for reimbursement. If you or your spouse are doing a good job keeping up with expenses, receipts and paperwork for submissions, could you say how you do it? It sure isn't rocket science, but I thought DCUM might have some ideas to make it go smoother.

[Anonymous]

We track all expenses in mint.com, so I can easily tag entries that are reimbursement-related and pull them up with one search. I'm also looking into a scan-snap to scan receipts immediately.

[Anonymous]

I'm in the same boat ... I am sure my expense reimbursement is a leaky ship and have no idea how much I'm losing. But, one of the best tips I've got is to open a dedicated credit card for reimbursable expenses only. At least that way I can cross reference statements with my expense reports and know when I'm missing something. If you've got to keep receipts for everything (instead of just below a certain threshold), you might get a smartphone/tablet app like Expensify and take photos of each receipt as it's incurred. Then try to remember to put all hard copies in the same pocket of your bag or even better a folder that you keep in your possession all the time.

Good luck ... huge pain in the A! I miss my old job with the company-issued card that was paid off straight from the credit card bill!

[Anonymous]

I agree that a dedicated credit card helps. It's rough getting a taxi to take a credit card though, so often there's no credit card trail for that.

We also have trouble with tracking mileage that my DH runs up on our car!

[Anonymous]

I have a love/hate relationship with expense reimbursement. I LOVE the credit card points I get for all the hotels, airfare and rental cars, but I hate that I am probably missing something every month. DH runs up probably 3k a month in work expenses on our personal credit cards. It's often a pain to pay and we aren't reimbursed promptly (sometimes it takes months). The worst was when he took training courses for $6500 and it took them 4 months to pay. We had just bought a new car and didn't have that much liquid money around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree that a dedicated credit card helps. It's rough getting a taxi to take a credit card though, so often there's no credit card trail for that.

This is exactly why I use Uber. No refusing credit cards and I have all the receipts automatically emailed to me.

[Anonymous]

I did it the old fashioned way - I had a paper template that I used for trips or general expenses and as I incurred them or after a trip I just wrote down all my expenses and clipped the receipts to the piece of paper. I often did it on a plane/train or in airports. I generally submitted them as I went along, but no less than once a month. We did have a corp card and a system that paid off amounts on the card as they were submitted so we had every incentive to keep up, but even before we had that system I was meticulous about tracking expenses as I was not willing to be footing the bill for work expenses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that a dedicated credit card helps. It's rough getting a taxi to take a credit card though, so often there's no credit card trail for that.

This is exactly why I use Uber. No refusing credit cards and I have all the receipts automatically emailed to me.

+1 billion