If you are responsible for managing invoices or billing, especially with the federal government, you must have the following - stamp for date received -a binder with a copy of everything you've submitted, and a tracking sheet in the front of that binder that contains: date received by your company, invoice #, invoice amount, date you hand it to the govie finance group, and date you receive the email from the task monitor saying the invoice is approved.  One would think with the millions of dollars both organizations have spent on their ERP systems, scanning interfaces and process improvement teams, a simple piece of paper that you fill out in log form - like they did in olden times when IBM Selectric were the rage - wouldn't be necessary.  WRONG.  As it turns out, this very simple piece of paper with handwritten comments, saves my ass at least once a month.  Had to pull it out today to stem the flow of stupid decisions -  whipped off a few emails quoting dates and amounts, and sure enough - whoops - Amy you are right.

Now, how many people DON'T have this, who just sit there, befuddled and thinking, I know I handed that in!  Then, they get a new invoice generated, submit it again, and 6 months later both have been paid and now there's an investigation for over-charging on the contract.  You just have to assume everyone else is going to fuck it up, and if you don't keep track of it from the very beginning to the very end, no one else will - they won't do their jobs correctly, they will lose some piece of information, and if you don't save them from themselves, all will go to hell.  Today I stepped back from the brink of said hell and I can't help but gloat.  I was made for this shit.