How to set up and use a shared Google calendar

 My son has always loved calendars and continues to ritually keep three of them in his room - one "Melissa and Doug" wooden one with magnetic numbers, one with pockets for the numbers and one where he affixes the numbers with sticky tape, thumb tacks, or both (and no matter how tattered that one becomes, it's not an easy to get him to accept a new one). I suspect it's a way for him to instill order in his life and also to feel a sense of control. He also has a Google calendar on his phone, and insists on printing its contents for the month precisely on the first day of the month and internet outages or printer problems are always a huge issue. We also have a family Google calendar for things like appointments and program times/days, which everyone has on their phone: these days I add zoom meeting details to calendar events so that everyone has them available. I also use the calendar to impose a schedule for meal times, start-of-day and end-of-day hygiene activities, hair-washing nights, etc.

In the event that you too want to be wildly scheduled, here are some simple tips.

To create and populate the calendar.

1. create a new gmail account for these purposes (I do this because I use other Google calendars for other purposes and I don't want my guy to, say, delete that dentist appointment he doesn't want to know about, or to receive reminders for days/times of TV shows I have no interest in watching)
2. log in to Google with that account (click the "person" icon in the top right corner of the toolbar and enter the gmail account information)
3. go to calendar.google.com (you might need to sign in again)
4. add events as necessary; including reminders
   for example, there's a daily event to remind my son to brush his teeth and wash his face, another to remind him to plug in his phone, etc

Add the gmail account to your mobile devices and away you go! As annoying as it is to have multiple calendars, I find that because the reminders for my son's activities show up on his beloved phone, he's much more likely to pay attention to them. If I notice particular events that he just cancels the reminder for, we have a chat about that. (He has his own calendar as well in which he can enter whatever he wants.) 

How to use My Direct Plan: A Basic Guide

This article deals with the most typical processes involved in making a claim to be reimbursed for an expense. Depending on what funds are spent on, you may not need to perform all the steps described here.

Note as of Dec. 2, 2021: When submitting worker  hours, for the temporary $3 an hour top-up, don't include that as a separate item, just increase the reported hourly rate by that value so, for example, if before the top-up you paid $20 an hour, report $23 an hour. They'll look after ensuring that the extra $3 an hour is not taken from your budget. If you're trying to figure out how to use your remaining funds at the end of the fiscal year, submitting an invoice for more than the balance might mean the invoice ends up in the "Action Required" status: if so, you click "Resubmit" and they'll reimburse just the balance. Or you scrape up invoices that are exactly or just under the balance.  

Depending on the category of the submitted expense, it may take the portion of the excess amount from next fiscal year's funding; this will put the next year's funding in a negative amount. 

Note also that if you submit two receipts for the same amount and the same date, the invoice will be flagged, but you can resubmit them to confirm that they are in fact two separate items (by clicking the action button).

Note: These is not in any way an official My Direct Plan document, and reflect my experience. They are accurate to the best of my knowledge based on the functions available in My Direct Plan as of April 1, 2021. They are intended primarily for use by those who are administering funds on behalf of someone else (a “fund administrator”). They do not cover all the features of My Direct Plan,such as using the budget planning tool or reimbursement for out-of-province expenses. My Direct Plan offers a Frequently Asked Questions section (go to https://mydirectplan.com and click FAQ in the top bar. 

This article is available in PDF format: click here.