Why this matters before you buy anything

Reimbursement requests are reviewed individually, and the burden is on you to prove what you bought, when, from whom, and how you paid. If you wait until you have a stack of receipts to figure out what goes where, you will lose some of them, misremember a purchase date, or run past the deadline without noticing your balance was lower than you thought. A running log fixes all three problems at once.

A place to start

Whatever sheet or app you use, the point is the same: one row per purchase, updated the day you buy something, not the day you submit it.

What to record for every purchase

This list isn't arbitrary — it's exactly what Odyssey requires on a receipt before it will approve a reimbursement. Recording it at the time of purchase means you're never reconstructing it later.

• Vendor name
• Purchase date (must match the date on Odyssey's request, and the date on the receipt)
• Itemized description of what was purchased — not "educational materials," the actual product name
• Total amount, including tax
• How you paid (card, cash, check, payment app)
• Which student and which category it belongs to

See what makes a receipt acceptable for the exact documentation rules, including the extra step required for cash, check, and payment-app purchases.