Given that summer 😎 is approaching and it's a high time for personal and business travel, I thought this might be a relevant topic!
Picture this: You go to an industry conference and have a GREAT time. Then, as you’re doing your debrief of learnings in your hotel room, you get the first company card notification. PING: your airplane ticket hit your account… PING: there’s the Uber from the airport to your hotel. PING: there’s that bagel that made it worth getting out of bed this morning. The list goes on as your phone starts lighting up like the Christmas tree you took down in January… (ok February)
So now you have to dig out your wallet with all the receipts you saved (you saved those, right??) and start taking pictures and uploading them and there goes the next two maybe three or more hours of your life. (Why oh why do humans require three meals a day to the tune of three separate expense report items??)
Stop, breathe, there’s an easier way to do this. Know for next time, there are some steps you can take before you even leave to take the work out of it.
1. First, create a folder in your Dropbox account for expenses for the event.
2. Next, set up a folder automation to tag all files uploaded to this folder with the event name. This way, as you incur expenses on your trip, snap a picture of each receipt before it ends up in a ball in your pocket (or on the floor of your hotel room) and save to your folder (optional to temporarily set up an auto save on your phone camera for the week you’re away to eliminate the action of manually saving). Have any larger receipts like the 8x10 bill that absolutely could have just been an email? Use the Dropbox scanner app to pdf and save to your folder.
3. Now, when you get home and those notifications start popping off, your receipts will be gathered in one place, organized in date order and tagged with the proper event name. Just upload to the expense system your company uses and bask in the afterglow of an event well-enjoyed (I mean, implement the learnings you took away from the conference because that’s why you went, not for the networking and amazing afterparty).
What are some other ways you save time (using Dropbox or not) around expense reports? Comment below, let’s discuss!
