What do folks use to track their payments? I do around 100 shops in a month and it is impossible to track when I get paid for these shops. I am sure there must be an easy way to track these payments.

Any suggestions?

Go to the Volition web site. Click on Mystery Shopping companies, then click on Useful Independent Contractor Tools, then click on Mystery Shopping Assignment Log.

This log will allow you to track your assignments, what's owed to you, and your payments.

Thanks! I will check it out.

I love to shop, but not so good at keeping good records. My wife is a List-a-holic, and keeps an Excel file with information such as MSC, shop location, date shopped, pay, reimbursements, date paid, how paid, etc. I love my wife.

You had me at $100 shops a month I use an excel spreadsheet and put the amount expected, the company and the expected pay date.

I do use a spreadsheet but it is impossible to tally everything as some companies consolidate and send you the money. They also don't mention for which shops or which month. I will have to start looking more closely at least at the bigger amounts. Now I am not sure if I ever got paid from Franchise Compliance for the numerous cleaning shops I did for them!

It gets tough when you do so many shops in a month.

Actually with a spreadsheet it is not that tough. At the end of the month sort the month's work first by company and then by date of shop. Companies generally pay for the oldest shops first so start from the oldest shops for that company, right click on the oldest payment due and hold as you drag the 'block' down the list. If you are using Excel you should see in the information bar at the bottom of the page how many shops you have included and what the total dollar value is for them. If you received a $76.49 check the chances are that you will have an exact dollar match in the first handful of oldest shops.

If I get no match my next attempt is to resort the sheet by company, client and then date. This gives me amounts by client when I do the click and hold drag and helps determine which client they are not yet paying.

And of course when worse comes to worst you can check the company's website as many of them show either what is being paid or when they are paying which shops. I just got paid for 28 shops done for a single company in November and the click and drag method showed me that the payment was correct to the penny for what I was expecting to receive. Once paid, I note the date and amount of payment received and then highlight the paid shops so I know at a glance what still is outstanding to be paid.

I have found a way to simplify this even more....Only shop the companies which pay in under 30 days, such as Trendsource, MarketForce, and a few others. The ones that pay every 90 days, drop them like a hot potato!

You can view on TS and MF what you have, what's pending and what's been paid....

No more of these flakey companies that take forever to pay.

Also TS and MF, get direct deposit. You can see the money right away and not wonder if it will ever make it to paypal or papercheck.

Not dissing paypal, I love their system but don't pick these companies that put you last priority in getting paid...

If I worked on that philosophy I would have about half the shops available to me that I have. There is a good reason to have a shop kitty . . . it allows you to work with more companies and be more selective about the jobs you will do with relatively little extra bookkeeping.

I don't care if they pay in 90 days if they do pay!

sbrahma Wrote:
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> I don't care if they pay in 90 days if they do
> in pay!


Yes. Iam still going to need the $20 in 60 or 90 days. If you limit yourself to 30 day payers, that's great, but it will limit your opportunities.