Helpful Hints
Keeping good office records of your expenses is very important. Submitting vendor invoices and employee's receipts for reimbursement in a timely manner is also important. Here are some helpful hints for your use.
For official expenses, look at your previous year's expenses to calculate your budget for the year. For example, if you spent $300 for subscriptions during 1996 and you know you are not adding any subscriptions in 1997, then you would need the same amount of dollars budgeted for 1997. You would enter $300.00 in the spreadsheet under subscriptions. If you pay your subscriptions in one lump sum every March, then under subscriptions for the month of March you would enter the $300.00. If you know that you spent $2400.00 for district phones in 1996, and you have not increased or decreased the number of district phones, chances are you will need to have about the same amount of money budgeted for 1997. So, under district phones on your spreadsheet, you would add in $2400.00 spread out over twelve months ($200.00 a month). You may have other fixed expenses, such as district office rent, equipment, etc. where you would enter the same amount of dollars for each month. The spreadsheet formulas will add your expenses for the month and for the year.
Keep well maintained office records: copies of vouchers, copies of invoices and copies of receipts. For example, each vendor you use could have his or her own file folder. Each employee could have his or her file folder. You may want to keep vouchers sent to the Finance Office in a pending file until you receive your Monthly Financial Statement. When you receive your Monthly Financial Statement, you may want to pull your pending file to reconcile your account. Items that appear on your Monthly Financial Statement were paid. You can check those items off on your copy of your voucher. Once all the items on a voucher are checked, you can file those vouchers in a permanent file. For items not checked, you might want to contact your Financial Counselor immediately to find out why an item was not paid.
Set aside one day a month to do all your billing. For example, since it is recommended that vouchers be submitted to the Office of Finance no later than the 15th of the month, you might want to set up a system where you do all your financial work on the 10th of every month. This will give you time to receive invoices that vendors may send at the end of the previous month or on the first of the month.
If you decide to set aside one specific day of the month where you do your billing, contact your vendors and ask them to get their invoices to you prior to that day. You can also let your vendors know that invoices received after your billing date will be paid in the following month. That way, your vendor will know when to expect a payment and it may also avoid late fees.
Work closely with your Financial Counselor for official expenses. They are available to make personal appointments with you to review your office accounts, to help you if you encounter a problem with a vendor, or if you just need clarification on a procedure. If a voucher is received in the Office of Finance and is incomplete or has errors, the vouchers must be returned to you for correction. This slows down the payment process.
Remember, all expenses become public record. Information supplied on your voucher is used to make up the Monthly Financial Statement. The Monthly Financial Statements make up the Statement of Disbursements (formerly called The Report of the Clerk of the House or Clerk's Report).
If you are ever in doubt about how to process a bill or reimbursement, contact your Financial Counselor. If you do not know if a desired expense is allowable, refer to the Members' Congressional Handbook, Committees' Congressional Handbook, and consult your Financial Counselor. If it is something unusual, you may have to consult the Committee on House Oversight. Your Financial Counselor is well versed in all Rules and Regulations of the House and will be able to answer your questions or guide you to the proper authority.