I've never enjoyed filling out and submitting expense reports (and who in their right mind does?). I dislike preparing them so much that I often put off doing it for months. As a result, when I finally get around to submitting my expense report, the accounting office gets upset with me because I've screwed up their quarterly reports. I've learned that it's not a good idea to get on the bad side of the accounts payable department.

Now that I've started using a free online service called Expensify.com, everybody's a lot happier. The thing that makes this service work for me is that it accesses the charges I've made on my credit card (the one I always use for business travel) and all I have to do is tick the checkboxes for each charge that I want to include in a particular report. Expensify imports all the pertinent expenses and adds them to my report. It also generates digital receipts for any expenses under $75, which means I don't have to dig around the bottom of my suitcase if I happen to lose a restaurant check. Expensify calls these digital receipts eReceipts, and they are guaranteed by Expensify to be accepted by the IRS. (Expensify promises they'll pay the difference in taxes that results from the IRS rejecting an eReceipt).

What happens if I pay cash for something? Not a problem. I just take a photo of it with my cell phone and e-mail it to receipts@expensify.com. If I have receipts in my e-mail (like from the airline or hotel), I can forward them to Expensify using the same address.

Expensify's iPhone app is really useful. I can use it to create my expense report as I travel. That means when my trip is done, my report is done, too.

When my report is finished, I enter the e-mail address of the person who handles the report. They get a summary and links to all the receipts, which they can either print out or save online.

Do you use a Web site to help you get something done better or faster? Please let me know about it!

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.