There is no part of my job I dislike more than filling out expense reimbursements. I once procrastinated for so long that the final tab was $38,000. I had to beg our company’s CFO to cut the check. Luckily, I’d kept the two years’ worth of receipts in a drawer, so my documentation was flawless, and I got paid. But the uncertainty in the outcome caused a significant amount of domestic tension. That’s a true story.

This year I’ve been using TrackVia to help me organize and submit expenses. I didn’t expect TrackVia to be a big improvement, since I generally think of our product as a database, not a spreadsheet. Of course there’s a grey area between those two types of software, but I usually consider TrackVia to be more useful for lists than for financial calculations.

To my surprise and delight, however, the chore is much faster and more accurate using TrackVia. Thus, for the benefit of paperwork-loathing professionals everywhere, I’m going to share my technique blow-by-blow in this blog post. Here goes.

First, I have a database called (naturally) Matt’s Expenses. The fields are:
   Purchase date – a date field
   Description – a short answer field
   Amount – a number field
   Status – a drop-down field, with choices of “paid” and “not yet paid”
   When Paid – a paragraph box

Whenever I buy something for TrackVia, I click on my Expenses database, add a record, and fill out the description and the amount. I use TrackVia’s “today” link to auto-fill the purchase date, and I have the status drop-down set to default to “not yet paid”. Therefore, it’s pretty quick to enter expenses as they’re incurred, instead of keeping a pile of receipts on my desk, which occasionally get bumped into waste basket. That’s benefit #1.

Now, some of my expenses come in the form of spreadsheets. For example, a few of the third-party marketing tools we use are billed automatically to my credit card whenever we’ve racked up a certain amount of advertising charges. Every few days my credit card will get charged without my knowing it. But these are easy to put into TrackVia: I download the charges from the advertising tool’s account management page, into Excel. I then upload that spreadsheet into TrackVia, using our field mapping wizard to change the marketing tool’s field names (e.g. “Payment Date”) into my field names (“Purchase Date”). Boom, 10 expenses are loaded into my database with no typing. That’s benefit #2.

On my TrackVia database overview page, I’ve removed the default report and put in a custom filtered view called Unpaid Expenses. It’s in chronological order, so it’s easy for me to keep an eye on how long it’s been since I’ve done expenses – I just look at the first date shown in that report. And it’s easy to see how much I’m owed at any given time — I click on “statistics” to see the total Amount for those unpaid expenses. Benefits #3 and #4.

When the list gets long enough that I decide it’s worth submitting a reimbursement form, TrackVia helps me de-dupe the list and make sure I’m not double-submitting expenses. For example, I might accidentally enter an expense for a book both on the day I order it and on the day it arrives. Before I submit the expense form, I use TrackVia’s quick search capability to pull up all expenses from Amazon. The search results immediately show me that my book is in there twice: from two weeks ago, with a status of paid, and from yesterday, with a status of unpaid. Two clicks later I’ve deleted the duplicate. Benefit #5.

TrackVia also helps me find gaps in regular expenses. I quick-search on “cell phone”, scroll to the bottom, glance at the Purchase Date and Status columns, and quickly see that Aprils’s bill is in there with a status of paid, and June’s bill is in there with a status of not yet paid, but May’s bill is missing. So I click “copy this record” on June’s expense record, change it to May, save it, and I just saved myself a $60 omission. Benefit #6.

But wait, there’s more! We have a standard company expense form template built in Excel, into which we’re supposed to type all of our expenses, then print it, sign it, and turn it in. My default report in TrackVia is laid out in the same column order as our reimbursement form: Date, Amount, Description. So I just click “Excel” in TrackVia, and when the spreadsheet opens, I select and copy the rows and paste them into the expense form (for Excel aficionados, I actually do Edit > Paste Special > Values). I save it, print it, and I’m done. No manual filling out the form. Benefit #7.

Finally, TrackVia gives me a great historical record (and here we get to the saving-my-marriage part). When the checks arrive from on high, I go back into the database and select the checkbox at the top of the Unpaid Expenses report. That selects all rows, and I use the “Continue” button and the short wizard to mark all of the expenses to a status of paid, en masse, and to enter the check number, the date I received it, and any other notes into the When Paid paragraph box. The expenses immediately disappear from my Unpaid Expenses report, showing a clean slate, ready to start the cycle anew. The benefit, though – our 8th and final benefit – is that when my wife, paying our bills some evening and still sore about the $38,000 near-fiasco, exclaims “Holy cow, there’s a charge for [some large amount] on our credit card! Did you remember to expense that??” I can do a Trackvia quick search and reply, “Yes, dear – it was part of the check I brought home for [some even larger amount] on [such-and-such date]. Would you like to know the check number?” My wife then looks at me admiringly, and perhaps makes kissing noises, because she’s so impressed that I’m on top of my game. And my marriage is saved.

(Okay, I took some poetic license in that last bit, but it’s a dry topic, so perhaps you’ll forgive me, gentle reader, for spicing it up a bit.)

Joking aside, it’s a good scheme, and it’s one of many unexpected ways in which TrackVia saves me time and keeps me organized. Now you know my scheme.

How about you? If you have novel ways of using TrackVia, please let us know.