Expenses

I know I’ve had this rant before, but I NEED to do it again. I think the Company try as hard as they can to keep their money, which means screwing you in the end. I’ve come to terms with the many things that I have to pay for out of pocket: ATM fees, buying my own GPS, etc.

I even become resigned to the very slow and painful expense reporting process. As soon as I get home, I start grouping my receipts together by day, taping them to sheets of paper, and scanning them. Blue printing ink, you are not my friend.

I itemize all my expenses and send in the report right away. I e-mail any questions finance asks of my immediately. These usually are the same questions, which I gave the same answers to the 20 others times they asked me before, but it doesn’t help to get cheeky with Finance. Did I mention the questions are from India? The time for question/answer is about a day due to time zone differences.

Then finally after the three approvals come through, I wait for my direct deposit. If things go really well, I might get the money just as my credit card bill becomes due (about a month time).

Fine. So this Monday, even though I have many, many things to catch up on, I start the process. What happens? A new expense system. I took me a day to set up an account. Now apparently it’s going to take 3-5 days for Finance to send me a supplier account number. Until then I can’t even see what the new expense system looks like.

Will this be a better system? Unlikely. I saw a little paragraph of what to do with receipts at the Home page of the website. Yep. Still the same taping and scanning. Probably still the same questions. Ah, frustration.