March 7, 1996
Dear Everyone:
Spent seven grueling
hours last Saturday going over “Jeannie’s” 1995 records.
Well, they weren’t all grueling; at least part of the time was
spent consuming French Silk pie at
Baker’s Square
(we broke for lunch between organizing and inputting), but I’d have to
say there was plenty of gruel to go around.
“Jeannie” showed up
at my place with, among other things, a
Nordstrom shopping
bag filled with “miscellaneous” receipts, culled from the floor and
seats of that rolling waste basket she calls a car.
When it comes to Records Management, “Jeannie” is definitely a
“bag lady”. She also had the
letter from her tax accountant, which included a copy of last year’s tax
form, showing all the categories for business-type records.
Armed with this, and
23 years’ of experience in records management, I started making up
“temporary” files for all “Jeannie’s” business expenses.
This meant writing the name of the file on a sticky note and
putting it on a folder.
Every time “Jeannie” would suddenly come up with a new category, I’d
write another sticky note and slap it on a folder, pausing occasionally
to re-alphabetize.
“Jeannie” would pull
a handful of receipts out of the bag and go through them, assigning them
to categories like “advertising”.
What goes into “advertising”?
Receipts from
See’s candy stores.
Giving a box of chocolates to a lawyer’s secretary constitutes
“advertising”. So do
Christmas cards.
Any receipt that was
vague, such as “Thank you.
$5.32”, fell into “parking”, a category that “Jeannie” uses often.
Any receipt that read “Large popcorn, medium diet coke” fell into
the waste basket as it couldn’t be legally claimed as a business
expense. Apart from that,
things were very flexible.
Once everything was
categorized, and we’d had lunch, we started feeding information into a
couple of Excel
spreadsheets that I’d set up.
One for personal expenses and one for business.
Being an organized and orderly type of person, I was inclined to
start at the beginning of the alphabet and go through the categories
systematically. For
instance, the first business expense would be “advertising”.
Being the
spontaneous and carefree type, “Jeannie” naturally picked up the
“wardrobe and dry cleaning” folder next.
Never mind that there were a dozen folders in between.
OK, fine. I could be
flexible. But I put my foot
down when she kept trying to mix business expenses with personal ones.
Nevertheless, we quickly settled on a formula:
“Jeannie” would pick a category, then go through the receipts,
canceled checks, etc., reading out the amounts which I would enter into
the spreadsheet.
I did insist that
she include decimal points.
“425” and “425” may sound the same, but when one means “$425.00” and the
other means “$4.25”, it can make a difference, particularly when dealing
with the IRS.
In the end, we had
two spreadsheets, copied to a diskette, and two reports, showing total
expenses, with details on a second sheet in case the tax man wants to
see them. When “Jeannie”
meets with him today, I predict he will be pleasantly surprised, if he
doesn’t go into shock.
Movies...
Since we
successfully concluded the financial chores on Saturday, our reward was
to go to a movie on Sunday.
We saw Up Close and
Personal. This could
also be called “A
Star Is Born...with
TelePrompTers”.
It could also be called
Pygmalion.
Robert
Redford plays the older
(58) television journalist who takes the novice,
Michelle
Pfeiffer (38), under his wing and turns her into the reporter he
wants her to be, then (surprise!) falls in love with her, all the while
knowing that
It-Will-Never-Work-Because-She’s-On-Her-Way-Up-And-He’s-On-His-Way-Down.
It was “inspired” by a book “based” on the career of
Jessica Savitch,
who had something to do with television news.
As “Jeannie”
pronounced afterward, “It was a very pleasant couple of hours.”
And the popcorn was good, too.
The movie is just as charming as it is predictable.
And it’s great fun to watch the evolution of Michelle Pfeiffer’s
hair over the years. Two
hanky ending.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |