Once upon a time an engineer went on a business trip. When he got back to his office, he filled in a form describing his expenses, made a copy of his receipts, sent them off and received his money back.
Ha ha ha.
That is how our so-called system is supposed to work - except that:
- The expense database is a separate web-application so I first have to find the email with the obscure web address and then spend half an hour recovering the password I haven't had to use for several months.
- When I come to use the perfectly reasonable system for attaching my receipts (scan them then attach them as a PDF document), it gets stupidly, unnecessarily clever-clever:
"To view these receipts...", this is not what I want to do - there are none yet, I simply want to upload some, "...you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed."
There is one option - a link to the Adobe website. I already have Reader installed, so I assume this is a Microsoft conspiracy to stop me using Firefox and start-up Internet Explorer. Same thing. So I try to install Reader - 10 download minutes later - Adobe Acrobat Reader cannot be installed because a copy is already installed. Aargh. - After what feels like most of a day messing around I finally give up and email the PDF to our processing person with a very frustrated message.
Today I had a very sweet reply telling me that there is an 'easier way' to attach my receipts to the expense claim. I did not believe my eyes when I read it. All I have to do is:
- Click on a link on the expense report to print out a cover sheet.
- Print out my scanned receipts (or re-copy them)
- Fax (FAX - seriously??) the cover sheet and the receipts to the California number on the cover-sheet.
- It's bad so far - what is this the 1980s? - but this takes the biscuit (cookie?): the fax will be received, a bar-code on the coversheet will allow some software to automatically attach my receipts (turned back into a PDF presumably) to the expense claim.
Grrr - how annoying...
ReplyDeleteThe simplest and best expenses system I've ever come across was called 'S.H.E.I.L.A', and she used to sit in the little office in the corner. You wrote a job number on each receipt using a Personal Engraving Nodule (P.E.N), and in return you would received something called a C.H.E.Q.U.E which could be exchanged at a bank for small slips of paper, often refered to as M.O.N.E.Y.
Those were the days...
A