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: Spend less time on your Timesheet

I am employed by a service company and we bill our clients for our services. Therefore, we must track our time spent on sponsor related work and pass the costs through appropriately. I am asked to track my time in 15 minute increments so I can basically report up to 4 time categories per hour or I can bill a half or whole hour to a specific time code. In order to receive a good performance rating, I must report at least 85% of my 40 hr work week as "billable time".

My non-billable time codes are things like: Sick, Holiday, General and Administrative Duties (G&A), Internal training (not project specific), goofing off (ok, so that is not a category but if ever I am shy of 40 hrs and can't account for the time then G&A is a good catch all), etc.

Billable time is coded by project (since I might work for several sponsors/projects at once) and then broken down into time categories as follows:
Project Specific Training / Sponsor Teleconferences - Reading protocols, watching power points, reviewing the Monitoring Plan, etc.
Preparing and Following Up - This category is used for making travel arrangements or writing confirmation/follow-up letters, or working on reports.
Traveling - Usually your project will have limits to how much travel time you are allowed to pass through. At my company, when long trips are unavoidable, you can lower your travel time by using the time in transit to complete other project related work such as studying or writing reports (billable to either of the 2 categories listed above) - obviously this works when on an airplane or delayed and not necessarily when driving!
Managing Sites - This is phone or email contacts to your study sites or running special project specific reports.
Conducting a Monitoring Visit - Actual time spent on site during SIV, COV, or routine MV.
Query/Database Management - Helping the site solve/close queries raised by data management, reviewing the clinical database, running reports, etc.
Expense Reporting - see my next post!

OK, so now that I explained how I categorize time, let me explain the time tracking system. You can think of it as a glorified version of Excel that lives on a web server. So to enter my time, I have to log into that system and enter all of my hours. We are asked to do this at the end of every day so we are as accurate as possible. Well, I don't have internet access all the time so sometimes I let a few days pass and it really is hard to remember what you did for the past 48-72 hours by 15 minute increments. To solve this conundrum, I made a copy of the fancy web-based timesheet template in Excel and I just leave it on my desktop. Each day before I log out of work, I update my time in my Excel template. Then every 2 weeks (or as I have time) I log into the web-based system and transfer it all. I know this is multiple steps but it seems to work better for me. You could also use a journal or jot notes about how you spent your time in your day planner. Any other tips?

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!