Summer Vacation

I've been so busy monitoring and traveling the past year and a half that I accrued quite the vacation bank. My project is at a lull so the timing feels right to take a little holiday. I found a cheap last-minute airfare to Europe so I am flying to Stockholm and will spend a few days there then fly to Frankfurt, Germany. In Frankfurt we will rent a car and drive West to check out castles and explore the Rhineland. We'll take a few days in Amsterdam and then fly home. It will be pretty whirlwind I'm sure but that is just my style - always on the go.

One of the biggest perks of my Regional CRA position is the hotel points, car rental credits, and airline miles I accrue. I am delighted that all 8 nights of hotel are free because of the points I amassed traveling for work. The airfare between Stockholm and Frankfurt was paid for by my Membership Rewards points on the corporate Amex (1% returns on all spend). We're flying first class using the upgrade coupons I received for flying so much last year, and we received a discount on a really nice Mercedes to zip around the autobahn because of my status in the car rental program. I could not be happier with how I'll be cashing in on these benefits. I hear other monitors say all the time how they bank all these perks but never get around to using them. I'm a firm believer in earn and burn. Can't wait to blow through all my freebies!

I also bought a really cool set of Sharper Image suitcases from Woot.com - fingers crossed they arrive before we leave. Maybe since I am saving so much money on the trip logistics I can bring an empty one just for shopping and see how far I can flex the Euro and the Krona. Ha det så bra - Adjö´ så lä´nge! Perhaps my Swedish blog readers can let me know if I am using that phrase properly. Danke! ;)

Efficiency Tips: Spend less time on Expense Reports

I pay for most things with my American Express (Amex) but I am required to submit receipts for all charges over $10. We either scan our receipts in and attach them through the web browser to a pending report or we fax them to a dedicated fax # with a spiffy system-generated coversheet that accomplishes the same thing. In the expense system website, every few days, charges from the Amex are automatically available for me to add details to (which sponsor is the charge billable to? is any part of the charge non-billable?) and to group into pending expense reports. Unfortunately cash purchases or those made on my personal credit card have to be manually entered and categorized so I try to limit these types of transactions.

I make my own travel arrangements through our travel agency and they pass those charges through to my Amex. Airline tickets, rental cars, and hotels are the bulk of my expenses and whether or not they are reimbursable is very clearly delineated in our travel policy (for example, a $500/nt stay with spa treatment at the Ritz is not OK, but $150 at the Marriott with free breakfast is very much within policy). There are also clear guidelines for our meal expenses and tips in the travel policy too, but in my experience, this is the area where I most frequently have issues with reimbursement. Part of the problem is that I may lose a receipt or they haven't scanned in clearly so my entire expense report can get denied or otherwise held up in processing. For that reason, I typically submit 2 expense reports for every trip. If I have booked airfare more than 2 weeks in advance, that goes through in its own report so I can go ahead and have the company pay my Amex down before 30 days pass. Everything else I pass through up to 4 weeks after the trip in a second expense report.

While traveling and at the time of purchase, I usually slip charge receipts in the billfold portion of my wallet but after a few days the wallet is overstuffed and won't fold closed. A solution I have come up with is to periodically group and file the receipts in a specific pocket of my laptop bag. The keycard folios they give you at the hotel are terrific for organizing receipts so I simply group them together in chronological order in those handy little keycard envelopes. I organize in two categories, transportation related (receipts for gas, rental car, parking, cabs, valet, tolls, etc.) and for meal expenses and tips.

Efficiency: Eating breakfast and working on expense reports.

When I am flying home from my visit, I put down my tray table and prepare all the receipts for scanning. I now travel with blank paper and tape (tape dispensers are bulky so I have taken to carrying self-dispensing double sided sticky crafting squares. I get mine from the dollar store but click here for a link to the product I am using). I fashion all the receipts on as many pages as I need and when I get home it only takes a few minutes to scan the whole stack and attach them to my expense report. Many hotels offer free business centers with scanning and faxing so I could also do this on the road but I like to do it when I get home for now.

Timesheets are due every two weeks so I ensure that when I am signing off on my timesheet I am also submitting any pending expense reports. Our Amex is paid bi-monthly so this helps me to always be current and never go in arrears on my corporate account. You certainly don't look very professional if you aren't paying your credit card on time so I manage this closely. Not to mention, who can afford all the crazy fees they would love to charge you?


You may also like...from The Lead CRA archives:

• Email Management April 2011
• 3.1 oz July 2010
• Routine Monitoring Visits March 2008

Efficiency Tips: General and Administrative Duties

I work at a CRO so we have a fairly robust on-line expense reporting system and a thorough web-based system for reporting our billable and non-billable time through an interactive on-line timesheet. Well, I don't have the new iPhone and we still can't access the internet while in-flight so I am not exactly on-line all the time. The result of this is that I have a tendency to get behind in both my expense reports and time reporting.

Complete administrative tasks
while on the road by booking
hotels that have well-appointed
business centers. Internet access,
printing, copying, faxing, scanning,
and a FedEx drop are a major help.

Timely reporting of billable hours and submission of accurate expense reports are two of the main conditions of my employment. My other big responsibilities are showing up when and where I am supposed to for site visits/teleconferences (that includes making travel arrangements far enough in advance that I am getting the best fares and being cost-conscious for my company and the study sponsor) and getting my reports done on time. I'm never actually late with reports, timesheets, or expense reports, but at times, I have felt like I was not always as on top of it as I would like to have been.

For each of these job responsibilties I have a few tips that have helped me stay under the radar of the big bosses and consistently make my submissions accurately and on-time. I'm always on the lookout for new methods of reducing my workload and working more efficiently, so feel free to post a comment with other suggestions. This is a big topic and I have a lot to say so I will tackle it in three different posts: MV Reports, Timesheets, and Expense Reports

I hope you find this series helpful!