The ADHD Tax

[cimorene]

Looks like I maybe misplaced the receipt from one of my shopping trips for work. I used the company account card and the pin, and you're supposed to bring back the receipt and sign it, and put it in an envelope, and they get attached to the itemized bill when it comes. Apparently I forgot to do that and I went through my wallet and pockets (which is where I carry the receipts in between purchase and filing) and didn't find it, so it looks like I must have had a brain turned off incident at the purchase point and failed to put the receipt in the right place there already. I came home and checked in our shopping bags, but we've been shopping twice or three times since then so the odds of it being found there were very low and indeed, it wasn't.

I wonder if this means I would lose company card privileges? I mean, that would be a lot less work for me in a way..., except that experience indicates it's actually a bit more work reminding the other people to do it than it is to do it myself, because the guy who used to be in charge of the shopping kind of got sick and basically had to drop all his volunteer activities.

But the thing is... when you have ADHD the best you can do is create systems or habits or routines that are supposed to remind you. It's not that you don't know it's important to remember a thing, it's just that the IMPORTANT tags in your brain have no bearing on whether it remembers something or not. So I have this system which has worked fine every OTHER time, and I have no memory of deviating from it, but it's also a couple of weeks ago and I wouldn't probably remember after that long anyway, when it went normally enough at the time. And you can't really do anything else about that! It doesn't matter how important it is or how well you understand that; in the moment, if something upsets the routine or something distracts you or whatever, you can still forget it. And I don't really see any way to make this system more foolproof at my end. Having a special pocket where I keep the card together with the receipt seemed like a good system to me, and I think it has worked every other time and I have no idea what happened, so... ???

And legally you don't HAVE to explain that you have ADHD to your bosses, and I kind of don't want to. I mean, to the volunteer bosses. My legal boss, who works in the district office and is a professional and really nice, knows that I do. But she doesn't have any input on the day-to-day operations of our office normally.

Comments

[viggorlijah]

If you know the shop can you get them to reprint the receipt? I used to get receipts reissued for records when they’d been misplaced by me or other staff.

[cimorene]

I guess that should be possible, buuuut wouldn't put be difficult for the cashier when it's already been a couple of weeks since then? However I'll offer to do that and see what our treasurer says.

[cesy]

All humans occasionally make mistakes and a company expense system should be able to cope with that. They must have a way to do exceptions, e.g. if the till broke and couldn't print a receipt. Hopefully they can be reasonable that you're normally reliable and just forgot it once.

[cimorene]

That's true, it must've happened before now. Thanks, fingers crossed.

[buddleia]

I used to have to collate receipts for this kind of thing and unless it was a pretty huge sum (like, hundreds of pounds)or the person kept submitting without any receipts, all they got was a slightly grumpy reminder to keep receipts. If it’s a company card the transaction is on a company statement.

ADHD or not, everyone makes mistakes or loses track of stuff and it’s reasonable to just say that’s what happened.

[cimorene]

Thanks, that's good to know!

[isilya]

I think all systems fail, even for people without ADHD! And having the system makes you more reliable than someone without a system regardless of ADHD.

Creating a backup might make it a little harder for the system to fail— e.g. taking a photo/scan of the receipt straight away at the till before putting it in the pocket. They might prefer the hard copy but if it goes missing then you can print out the photo/scan for the records.

I do this for receipts of purchases of things that might need to be returned or have warranties. I use Dropbox on my phone, it has a scan function, and I do it before leaving the store even though it’s a little fiddly at times. I still don’t have a 100% track record in keeping important receipts though!

[cimorene]

Oohhhh thank you, that's a really good tip! I could totally do that!

[isilya]

Your managers sound unbearable so sympathies for having to deal with them. When my employees did this (pretty frequently!) what I appreciated was if they made a “post-it” receipt with what was actually bought, from where, and the date.

If it’s a routine and usual purchase (e.g milk was a frequent petty cash office expense) then “copying” a similar receipt is helpful, including the tax.

Bookkeepers, especially for non-profits that get to claim back tax, usually need what was bought and the tax paid to allocate the expense category correctly, and this is info the statement does not provide. So this kind of “post-it receipt” makes it easier for them when they are reconciling the card statement.

[cimorene]

Fortunately, our itemized bills have all the items and their cost and the tax on them already, so there was no difficulty sorting it into the right category. We're supposed to save the receipts for... I think it's um, three years? or something like that legally, but in practice the likelihood of them being needed (in an audit, I guess) is fairly low so it will probably not come up. I did offer to try to order a duplicate receipt, but the treasurer said that it wasn't worth the trouble and she just wrote 'receipt missing' on the page for the bookkeepers.

[laurajv]

at my work there's a "lost receipt" form you fill out. it's a little tedious but just echoing what everyone else said -- they should have a system in place for this!

[cimorene]

That's a good point! Granted, we only typically have like 2-3 receipts per month. But still, it's been years, so this must have happened before, right? I'm not actually like 50% more absent-minded than the median person!