About Me
I work as a Management Consultant. I invoice monthly but submit expenses to my client weekly. The expense process is long winded and time consuming and I am trying to streamline this.
Current Process
Between Monday to Friday every week, I collect receipts during my day to day client business activities. All of my expenses on client business are chargeable and reimbursed to me as part of my invoicing process.
- Every Sunday, I begin the dreaded task of “doing my expenses”! I normally have around 30-50 receipts per week for things like coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, accommodation, travel etc etc
- I have to use a client spreadsheet (which is actually quite good) and on this, I add the date, expense category, description and value for each receipt on a line by line basis. Once I have completed the expense sheet, I have to write on each receipt a reference number which relates to the line item eg “1” on receipt “1” etc
- To do this, I glue the actual receipts onto an A4 blank page and then write the number on each receipt (to line up with expense line).
- Once this is done, I scan the physical receipts (all scans are A4 size) and save these scans in a folder. I then combine these scans with the electronic receipts I have collected eg flight tickets, accommodation etc to create a Wk 07 pdf to accompany the week 07 spreadsheet in the week 07 folder.
- I double check that all completed correctly then email the spreadsheet & scans to client
- At the end of each month, I invoice the client with a simple invoice showing days worked + expenses (for the weeks worked in the month)
Notes
(a) All “out of pocket expenses” are paid for by me personally and repaid back to me from my business bank account on a monthly basis. So on my bank statement, I have a “drawings” reference which aligns with reimbursement.
(b) That means that I do not have single expense line items in my bank account for day to day transactions (eg coffee etc) so I cannot reconcile on this basis (and nor do I want to).
How do I streamline my process to deliver better results using this system?
Kind regards
Mike