Mint.com with work travel expenses/reimbursements?

[AlanStache]

I have been trying to use mint.com for the last three or four months but as I travel somewhat often for work with personal credit cards (with reimbursements) the summaries and pie charts from Mint are very distorted.  I get summaries like "you spend 43% of your income on travel" or "you spent 2000$ less with Delta this month than last month" and it see's the reimbursements  from my employer as income so that puts tons of noise into that system too.  Or it may show all my eating out while traveling as "me" eating out when the bill was directly handed to the accountant when I got back.

How do others deal with this?  Is it best to have mint ignore all work travel expenses?  But then you would still get distortions as I normally pull out cash for travel then that gets paid back as part of the general expense report.  And still will get 200$ phone bills where my base (unreimbursed) bill is 50$.

Mint.com is less useful than I had hoped it would be mostly for the above reasons.

For what it is worth I basically fly somewhere once per month, for 4 days to two weeks at a time.  To get the rewards points I normally travel with the two cc's I personally use when home so it is all mixed up together. 

Any and all thoughts are welcome!!

[Rebecca Stapler]

I created a category for work reimbursements, so whenever there is an expense or income I can just shuffle it into that category.

[olivia]

You can also just exclude the transactions if your reimbursements are equal to your expenses. (Obviously that won't work if you get a set per diem for food regardless of what you spend, though.)

Or could you just use one card as your dedicated work expenses card and add a checking account that you get your reimbursements sent to? My husband has a work credit card that he gets reimbursed for, but occasionally he has to pay it off before he gets reimbursed. It was totally screwing up our finances so he opened a second checking account that he uses just for work reimbursements, and that account isn't connected to our mint.com account.

[minimalist]

I categorize the reimbursement to match the expense to cancel it out (e.g. Expense: Train -$150, Reimbursement: Train +$150).

[AlanStache]

"(e.g. Expense: Train -$150, Reimbursement: Train +$150)."  I normally get a lump sum reimbursement including per-diem so there is no one to one mapping.  And things can be scattered all over time depending on when different things clear the card or I get back and do the paper work.

Second checking/new card: yeah... all I got there is some winning about that taking effort.

Will probably start with a new category and just dump them all there, see how that works.  Can this be set up so the carts and trends ignore it?

[ASquared]

Just use the "exclude from mint" category.  I do this all the time for reimbursed expenses.

[EK]

I run all work expenses on a credit card that I do not have linked to mint.

(an aside: if you have work expenses that you pay out if pocket and get reimbursed for... why not make money doing it?  Put all expenses on a card with great rewards!!  I make a few hundred a year this way for my trouble.)

When I get the reimbursement check, I use the "exclude from mint" category and pay off the balance of the card.

[minimalist]

"(e.g. Expense: Train -$150, Reimbursement: Train +$150)."  I normally get a lump sum reimbursement including per-diem so there is no one to one mapping.  And things can be scattered all over time depending on when different things clear the card or I get back and do the paper work.

Yes, me too. I get a lump sum for hotel, train, etc. so I split the reimbursement into multiple transactions (e.g. Reimbursement: +$350, split transaction: +$150 Train, +$200 Hotel)

[AlanStache]

How do you benefit from breaking the reimbursement into multiple transactions vs just excluding them?  Does it help make sure all expense were reimbursed?

Yes most all work travel and costs get put on cards that either give me airline miles or cash at the end of the year.  But I still need walking around cash, never liked landing somewhere without local currency.  And I would rather not admit how many magazines I bought in airports over the last  few months...  (but then I guess that is my personal expense and should be included in mint).  I often have to rent expensive hardware while onsite, got back 700$ from one card alone last year.

[dorkus619]

I'm in the same predicament as OP, Thanks for the tips everyone. I will try to get my mint expenses in order. Esp before my upcoming trip early Sept!

[Gen Y Finance Journey]

I just exclude work-related expenses from Mint. Yea, the income side is messed up when I get reimbursements, but I use Mint to track my spending, not my income, so I'm ok with it.

[dorkus619]

Yea, the income side is messed up when I get reimbursements, but I use Mint to track my spending, not my income, so I'm ok with it.

You can also exclude the reimbursements. Mine come seperately than my paycheck so I programmed every payment with that description to automatically set the category to exclude.

I think I got mine all in order - just in time for buying plane tix and registering for an expensive Color Marketing Group summit in California!!! :D woo!!