Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Tax Day
It's tax day, and once again this year I didn't keep good records to be able to write off my *cough* unreimbursed business dinners. So now I'm going to have to just randomly write off every 3 dinners and cross my fingers. I don't want to be in the same position next year, so I've developed this "life-hack" that hopefully will be easy to follow all year. I don't plan on filing a business process patent on this, so go ahead and use it.
Prerequisites: Blackberry or other smartphone, Gmail account (hosted gmail works too).
Step 1: Create an entry in your smartphone address book called "business dinner." Make the email address "youremail+bizdinner@gmail.com." Gmail will ignore anything after a plus sign in the first part of an email address and deliver it normally.
Step 2: Create Gmail filter on all emails where the TO: is "youremail+bizdinner@gmail.com." Apply a label to it (bizdinner) and have it skip the inbox (archive).
That's it. When you're paying the check, send an email to that address from your berry with the restaurant name and who you're eating with. At the end of the year you can click on the label in gmail and get an automatic list of all your business dinners.
It's tax day, and once again this year I didn't keep good records to be able to write off my *cough* unreimbursed business dinners. So now I'm going to have to just randomly write off every 3 dinners and cross my fingers. I don't want to be in the same position next year, so I've developed this "life-hack" that hopefully will be easy to follow all year. I don't plan on filing a business process patent on this, so go ahead and use it.
Prerequisites: Blackberry or other smartphone, Gmail account (hosted gmail works too).
Step 1: Create an entry in your smartphone address book called "business dinner." Make the email address "youremail+bizdinner@gmail.com." Gmail will ignore anything after a plus sign in the first part of an email address and deliver it normally.
Step 2: Create Gmail filter on all emails where the TO: is "youremail+bizdinner@gmail.com." Apply a label to it (bizdinner) and have it skip the inbox (archive).
That's it. When you're paying the check, send an email to that address from your berry with the restaurant name and who you're eating with. At the end of the year you can click on the label in gmail and get an automatic list of all your business dinners.
