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.

­How to Get and Organize Electronic Receipts

For a PDF version of this article, click here.

Preparing for Electronic Receipts

Setting up an Organization System for Receipts on your Computer

I find it useful to collect electronic receipts whenever I make a purchase, rather than waiting until it’s time to submit them, but you might prefer to collect them monthly. Regardless of your process, organization of the receipts is important.

I store electronic receipts on my computer in a folder structure that looks like this: 

As I collect receipts, I put them in the “To Submit” subfolder. When I submit a receipt, I move it to the “Done” folder for the month. If you prefer not to move files between folders as you submit them, another option is to change the file name of the receipt to include “done” (e.g. Corbrook_45_done) and keep everything in one folder. This may seem like over-kill, but I find that I have significantly more receipts in this time of COVID, and that, combined with the change of getting interrupted frequently, led me to adopt this system.

The key thing is to capture receipts as you go rather than trying to collect everything at the end of the month.

With COVID-allowable expenses such as internet costs or streaming service subscriptions that are typically paid automatically at a specific day per month, you might consider creating a “placeholder” text file for each and copying it into each month’s folder, as a reminder. So, for you example, you might have, in your “To Submit” folder, with names like Internet,  iTunes, Netflix, Apple TV, etc.

The files would be empty, they’re just there to remind you to track down a receipt and you can delete them when you have the actual receipt.

Setting up a Naming Convention for Receipts

The names of the electronic receipts provided by organizations vary and are sometimes not particularly descriptive. Where possible, I rename files to make them easier to recognize. In particular, I try to Include as much identifying information in the file name as possible, including the name of the program, the dollar value, and the date range (all of this information will be required when you do your submission). For example, Corbrook_March 6_12_45 or Worker_March1_20_250. 

The time it takes to do this is more than compensated for in the time it saves me when doing a submission.

 

Getting Electronic Receipts

 Below are some suggestions for ways to get electronic versions of receipts, in no particular order.  Note that My Direct Plan supports pdf, jpg, jpeg, gif, tiff, and png files, and presumably other systems such as eClaims do the same. If the site you are uploading receipts to imposes size limitations for a month’s submission and you submit a lot of receipts at a time, you might want to use .jpg format, which is relatively small.

 

Getting Electronic Receipts Directly

Your service provider might send you electronic versions of receipts directly. Support workers may also provide you with electronic receipts.

For Programs Registered for In My Community Hub

1.     1. From the home screen of My Community Hub, click Receipts. You see a list of all available receipts.

2.     2. Click on a receipt number to display the receipt on your screen.

3.      3. Click on Printer Friendly Version to display the receipt in a separate window in a form that is suitable for printing.

4.      4.Click Save and save the file in a graphic file format.

For Netflix:

1.     1. Open Netflix.

2.     2. Click the down arrow adjacent to your name in the top right corner, then click Account.

3.     3. Click Billing Details.

4.     4. Click on a date. The bill opens in a new tab: use one of the methods described earlier to capture it electronically.

For iTunes

I get a monthly receipt emailed to me and I print it to a graphic file (more on this later) and save it. The process for viewing your account details in iTunes requires setting up two-factor authentication, which I figured was more effort than it was worth for an $11 a month expense, but we’re not purchasing any items, just paying for the streaming service.

For Disney+:

1.    1. Hover the mouse pointer over the icon representing your login (top right corner) and click Account.

2.     2.Click Payment History.

3. You see a list of monthly invoices.

3.     4. Click on the date of the invoice. The invoice is shown in a pop-up window, which includes a Print button.

4.      5. Click Print and choose the printer destination (or save as PDF.

Producing Electronic Receipts from Paper Versions

Take a Photograph

Place the receipt on a plain white sheet of paper and take a photo of it with your phone. I find this difficult to do from above, so I sometimes use sticky tac to attach the receipt to the paper and then use a magnet to attach it to the fridge so I’m taking the picture face-on, as it were. Email the picture to yourself, then save it to the appropriate folder.

 

Scan the Receipt

Many home printers include a scanning feature. Be sure to save the scanned image to the appropriate folder.

Create a PDF Version Using a PDF Printer Driver

If you find you can’t save an electronic file in PDF format, add a PDF printer to your computer and then print the online receipt to that printer. There a bunch available, such as Bullzip (https://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php) and Cute PDF (https://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp). As with any software, make sure it’s legitimate before downloading it. Once you have one of these drivers installed, when you click “print” you can print to a PDF file, which you can then save to the appropriate folder.

Use ALT+Printscreen

Display the receipt on your screen, then press the ALT key and the PrintScreen key simultaneously. This copies whatever is on the screen to your clipboard. Open another application, such as a graphics program or even Word, then press CTRL_V (paste). That pastes the image into the application. Save the file you pasted the image into with an informative file name, and save it to the appropriate folder.

Use a Graphics Tool

There are many of them out there, including antiques like Microsoft Paint. Windows 10 has a built-in “snipping” tool that’s pretty easy to use: just run it, click New, then drag the cursor over the text you want to save as a graphic, then click Save and save the file to the appropriate folder in one of the allowed file formats.

Don’t Forget to Print!

 For any receipts that you'll be using for tax purposes, print the electronic version when you do your Passport submissions: that will reduce (somewhat) the paper chase come tax time. 

Don’t Forget to Print!

For any receipts that you’ll be using for tax purposes, print the electronic version when you did your Passport submission: that will reduce (somewhat) the paper chase come tax time.

End of Year Passport Submissions

Just a tip when making your end-of-the-fiscal-year Passport submissions (the fiscal year ends March 31): if you have a remaining balance that's less than the amount of the invoice you want to submit, the invoice will be rejected. My Direct Plan support said told me to manually adjust the invoice so that it was a figure equal to or lower than the remainder and submit that version. The system apparently cannot handle partial reimbursements (or do the math that would calculate them). This wasn't a problem for me because I could adjust the invoice received from my support worker to reflect fewer hours and therefore a lower bill. How this would work for people who just have invoices from agencies and the like that cannot be adjusted is uncertain: please let me know if you find a solution to this!