Mad Monday

Monday seems to roll around at least once a week. I hate Monday's. It's the day all the financial records have to be updated and I am the one that has to do it. Living in this country is like living in a time warp to Americans. Half the stuff you buy doesn't come with a receipt, which means that you have to remember how much you spent on what items and record it when you get home. Yeah, right, like that's going to happen. So on Monday morning you have all these handwritten receipts that you actually did remember, and money missing out of the cash drawer that you can't remember where it was spent. So what do you do? You have a category in your accounting program that you have named "Miscellaneous," which translates "I can't remember what we bought with that, but God knows, and He isn't saying." At least all the large purchases come with a receipt, so if anything has to be repaired or replaced that is accounted for. Where you get into trouble is stuff like eating off the street. Giving a food vendor the equivalent of about $1 for your lunch meal, then going down to the corner store for your bottle of water, paying in cash for yourself and maybe a few others. Anyway, it adds up and by Monday morning you are in the hole for a few dollars with no receipts. Then there are the receipts that have no English words. You didn't look at it when it was handed to you, you didn't write on it what it was for, and now you sit wondering what it was for. Now is the time you call your translator. "OK, you bought a bottle of water, a rubber gasket, bananas, a phone card, and a giant fried bug to scare the girls in the office." All of this costs about $4. And it is not separated on the receipt as to how much each item was. Just a total for everything. It goes into the "Miscellaneous" folder which in this case translates into "ain't no way I can ever separate this out so it all goes into one big pile." You would think that bookkeeping around here is a little dicey and you would be right. So far, we have had 2 accountants tell us that we are doing fine with our records. Nobody, they say, can account for every penny. That is why there is a "slush fund," or that thing where all the coins go. I think that is what we are calling "petty cash." At any rate today is Monday and I had better get cracking with the bookkeeping. We leave Wednesday for the border. Another currency to deal with and the exchange rate changes each and every day. I should have paid better attention when we studied this in accounting class.