Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Expense reports

I've spent the last two days trying (and mostly failing) to put $13,474 worth of travel expenses from the last two months into expense reports. 

The thing is, expense reports aren't hard, not if you do them immediately upon return from your trip.  Because that's when everything is fresh in your mind and you have all of your receipts. 

But, see, I hate doing expense reports.  And so I procrastinate - I generally don't get around to doing them until a couple of months after the travel.  At which point I've lost all of my receipts and have no memory of what actually happened when.  So me doing my expense reports mostly consists of printing out my corporate card statement, highlighting the charges that fall within the travel date, calling various hotels in the hopes that they can email me my folio, and crossing my fingers that things get approved.  And it takes me two days to get caught up.



I feel like there's an important learning that can be had from my expense report method.  Something about not procrastinating.  Something about seizing the moment and motivating yourself.  Something about not putting off until tomorrow what can be done today. 

And, for the love of god, something about how it's easier to tackle things as they happen, rather than waiting for them to pile up until they bury you.

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