Well, thank you for watching this video in which we’ll cover 10 do’s and don’ts for completing your reimbursement form. We’ll look at seven “do” items and three “don’t” items.
The Do’s
1. Create Legible Copies
Please do create legible copies of your reimbursement form and your receipts. I know this sounds common sense, but oftentimes in the rush of getting things to us, parents oftentimes don’t take that second look at what they’re sending to us, and so what we receive is blurred copies or, if there are copies made by an iPhone or Android, we get the “Star Wars” effect where the person kind of takes the picture like this at an angle, and we’re looking at a photo of the document kind of like this. So please don’t do that. Please make sure that what you send to us is really clear. We can tell exactly what’s being purchased and the dollar amount because if not, we’re just going to have to delay reimbursing you. We’re going to have to get back in touch with you, you’ll have to rescan, resend those receipts to us, and you might have to redo your reimbursement form. I hope not, but please make sure when you are sending anything to us for reimbursement that we can clearly see exactly what it is you’re purchased and then also clearly see the dollar amounts that you’re requesting reimbursement for.
2. Order Your Receipts
Please do make sure that if you’re sending to us let’s say more than three receipts, that you have ordered those receipts in the same order that you have listed them on the reimbursement form. Oftentimes we will get stacks, I’m not kidding, like this thick receipts, and they’re just in a jumbled, random order, and it takes a lot of time to go through the receipts and match the receipt to the items on the reimbursement form. It slows down the entire process. That delays getting reimbursement to you, and it delays getting, finishing your reimbursement so we can get on to no one else’s. So please help us to help you get your reimbursement as quickly as possible by sequencing or ordering your receipts in the same order that you listed them on your reimbursement form. It’ll help everybody out tremendously.
3. Remember There Are No Dollar Limits
Please do remember that here at THEE, we do not have a dollar limit or a percentage limit on what you can spend for technology or group lessons/tutoring. In the past, just last school year, there were some limits on group lessons and some other things, but this year we don’t have those limits for specifically group lessons, and at THEE, we’ve chosen not to put in any type of limit on the dollar amount for technology, you know, computers, hardware, software. So please remember that you can spend your full amount on those items. Just a word on that, some school districts have chosen to put limits, either dollar amounts or percentages, based on the funding that goes to the parent. We have not done that. I really don’t see a need for that. It’s not required, so we’re not doing that.
4. Provide Official Foreign Exchange Documentation
Please do provide formal documentation of any foreign exchange numbers, currency on a receipt because if you buy something outside of Canada, so most often families buy things from Amazon.com or a bookseller, a retailer, vendor who’s based in the U.S., and of course, they they price their items in US dollars, and we need, in order for us to reimburse you the Canadian dollar amount, we have to see an official foreign exchange percentage conversion, the US dollar to Canadian. Or maybe you’ve bought it in some other country, that happens too. So wherever you’ve bought it, if it’s not if the price isn’t listed on the receipt in Canadian dollars, we need you to provide an official document that shows us that conversion. Sometimes it can be a screenshot of not your whole credit card statement, but a screenshot from your credit card statement where Visa or MasterCard has actually done the conversion to Canadian dollars and it’s shown right there on your statement. We can take a screenshot of that, or you can go to any website that does a foreign exchange rate for you as their service, and you take a snapshot of that. Just make sure that if you use a website, that the date that you used for that currency exchange is the same date on which you purchased it. So we have to, we just have to make sure that the exchange rate is is correct because during an audit we’re required to show that. So it’s not just our rule that we’re making up to make things harder for you. That’s something that’s expected of us, and if we haven’t done it, then the auditors, well, we’ll just leave it at that. So just make sure that you you have done the currency exchange in an official way. Hand writing it on the form is not sufficient. We have to have an official screenshot or printout of that exchange, foreign exchange rate.
5. Use the Same Name
Please do choose to write, how do they say this, write the name on your reimbursement form that you use the same name on your reimbursement form as you used to enroll or register, notify your son or daughter in our home ed program. This is rare, but it’s becoming less rare, where if parents have an alias or they they just have different names, and so the legal name that we are looking for when we get your form to to match your your legal name that’s on our in our database to the reimbursement form, we can’t find the name that you’ve used on the reimbursement form because it’s an alias or just some other name that you did not use when you registered your child with. That really delays things and causes a lot of confusion here and wastes a lot of time, to be honest. So please make sure that you are using the same name on the reimbursement form as you used to register your child in our program.
6. Match the Dollar Amount
Do ensure that the dollar amount which you’ve written on your reimbursement form matches what’s on the receipt. So what the problem that we oftentimes see is an amount that’s perhaps handwritten on the reimbursement form doesn’t match any amount on the receipt that we have. It’s almost like the parent is expecting us to just pick or determine or somehow calculate from six or seven purchases the amount that’s on the reimbursement form. We can’t do that. That’s impossible. So please make sure that the number that you have written, the dollar amount that you’ve written on your reimbursement form, matches a number on your receipt. Now, sometimes you have to hand-calculate the amount on your receipt because you have mixed school items with personal items or other reasons, right? So maybe you have a list of ten things you purchased, but you’re only asking reimbursement for six, so you need to tell us which six that you want reimbursement for, and then some, give us a sum total of those six on the receipt. You know, circle, highlight whatever those six items, add them up, come up with a total, and then put that amount that you hand written on the receipt or some other document, I’ll put that amount onto the reimbursement form itself. So we just need to make sure that we can match. There’s a one-to-one match between the number that’s on the reimbursement form and the number we’re seeing on the receipt.
Bonus Don’t:
Just a side note, this is a little bonus item. Please don’t, this will be a don’t. Please don’t mix personal items with school items for which you want reimbursement when you go to a checkout line, either Costco, Walmart, anywhere. Please either run up, run through, pay for your personal personal items separately from the school items. Sometimes even like at Costco, I believe you can say, “Please ring these up separately,” even though they’ll pay, you know, once, but they can separate the items and give up gifts subtotals. So we can find easily the amount you’re requesting, and it keeps you from having to go out, go through your long receipt and highlight or circle just those items you want reimbursement for and then have them all up. It’s really easier for you, it’s certainly easier for us. So please, as a don’t item, please don’t mix personal with school items. Just take that extra moment to separate that process, that transaction. It really makes everything go more smoothly, more more quickly.
7. Use One Line Per Receipt
Please do use an individual line on your reimbursement form to write the information related to one receipt. Do not itemize each item in its individual cost that comprises the total receipt amount. Basically what we’re asking for is on the receipt, I’m sorry, on the reimbursement form, you have separate lines. Please do not itemize every single thing that you purchased. If you purchased ten things, we don’t need to see ten items, you know, listed on that form. We just need to see the the total amount from that purchase on one entry line, right? So if you bought ten things at Staples, you’re going to have on one line “Staples, a hundred dollars and twenty cents,” even though you might have purchased six or ten things. That’s fine. We don’t need to see an itemized list. We just need to see the the final amount. So please don’t itemize your receipts. So that’s actually a do item, so please do use one individual line per receipt.
The Don’ts
8. Don’t Separate by Child
Let’s get on to the don’ts. Number eight, don’t separate receipts per child because your funding, your home ed funding, is in a family account, or I could, the family account. If you have two or more children, all your funding for each child is added together in a parent family account, and so your reimbursement requests will be based on that family account, not based on each individual child’s account. Put everything into one account. We sum sum all that money together, so you don’t need to use a separate reimbursement form per child. It’s just per family. Okay. And then number nine is related to that, where you don’t have to separate out each child’s receipts either. You don’t, even on if you’re using one reimbursement form, you don’t have to group one child’s receipts if they’re if it’s that clean-cut. Oftentimes resources are shared among children, but if certain receipts are for specific children, you don’t have to take that extra time to put as a, “John now John has four items, so you’re gonna write all Johnny’s things for and then Suzie’s and, you know, back to the next child.” It doesn’t matter which order they show on the reimbursement form. It’s a family reimbursement form, so just you just put them all there together, but just remember, please use one line per receipt.
9. Don’t Itemize
And then number ten, I use number ten just to repeat the item of the request to please don’t itemize your receipts. We see this frequently. It really, it doesn’t take too much time if it any on our side, but it’s wasting your time because you had, sometimes your receipts are quite involved, and we see that a mom or dad has taken a lot of time to write out every single thing that’s on that receipt, and I just think, “Wow, that’s a lot of time that that parent took that wasn’t necessary.” So save yourself time by knowing that you don’t have to itemize. Please don’t itemize your receipt. Again, one line, one receipt.
Conclusion
So that’s it for the list of do’s and don’ts, and hopefully this video will make the process of completing the reimbursement form much more easily done and more quickly done for you and for us too, so that we can get the money to you as quickly as possible. Thanks for watching.
