TITLE: Managing receipts on fieldwork
DATE: 2019-05-15
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
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ost of the time when I'm doing scientific fieldwork, I have to keep
track of receipts in order to get reimbursed by my funding at a
later date. Keeping track of all these bits of paper over the
course of a long expedition can be really annoying and I have to
have some sort of system in place otherwise I quickly lose the
receipts.
Normally, when I get a receipt, I immediately take a picture of it
on my phone, that way even if I lose the receipt, there is a
backup. Forcing this habit is tough at first but I have found it
becomes normal quite quickly. If the receipt is of ambiguous
purpose or it's lacking some information like the date, I normally
scribble this on a blank area of the receipt before taking the
picture. I also have the same approach for backing up field data in
notebooks. Before my boots come off at the end of the day I take
pictures of all the pages filled in that day and put them on the
laptop. It's saved me at least once I can remember when a notebook
got very wet and one of the pages got torn. At the end of the day,
the receipts go in a plastic zip folder. Most of the time during
the trip, things only go in this folder, they don't come out.
Towards the end of a trip, if I have the time and energy (sometimes
it gets done on the flight home), I make a spreadsheet of the
expenses with this information:
Item Date of purchase Local currency Cost (local) Cost
(GBP) Description Notes Receipt image file
------- ------------------ ---------------- --------------
------------ --------------------- -----------------
--------------------
Train 2019_03_01 AOA 12000 29.40
Lubango -> Benguela 50% other grant train_lub_ben.jpg
This makes it easier to keep track of all the costs of the trip and
helps when applying for reimbursement.
In some places, for instance mechanics in Lubango, or a roadside
fruit vendor, providing receipts is not the norm and so I tend to
carry a receipt book around with me. I fill in the cost and ask the
vendor to sign it. However, I would also not recommend claiming for
every tiny little bit of expenditure. My opinion is that there are
some things you can claim on expenses that you would be spending
money on even if you weren't in the field, such as food, and this
balances out the many small things that it's really not worth
claiming for, like a beer when out with colleagues. However there
is also the line of thought that one is claiming for expenses to
repay themselves for the potential discomfort of being away from
home for so long.
I've seen some people keep track of receipts by stapling them to a
piece of A4 paper. That way the receipts are harder to lose, and
also they can write notes on the A4 page referring to the receipts
with extended descriptions, a breakdown of the cost, and other
necessary information.