Researcher Invoicing

There are two steps to the invoicing procedure: filling out the hour breakdown and filling out the new Google Form. 

Your RM will send out the Google Form every month. If you do not see your name under the name section, please select "OTHER (NOT LISTED) - CONTACT FINANCE@ACLEDDATA.COM AND PUT YOUR NAME IN THE COMMENTS". If your name does not appear on the form, contact finance@acleddata.com. 

Some other things to consider about the invoicing process:

• If you have worked on any special projects (apart from regular coding/backcoding) please indicate what hours you have worked for each in either the Comments or Regional Breakdown questions of the Google form. This can be a simple breakdown: e.g. 50 hours (25 ACLED coding; 25 ESRC grant) - if you are unsure what to put, feel free to ask your RM before submitting. This also applies to those working on more than one region (e.g. East Asia + Middle East General). If you are claiming 50 hours, please break that down by region (25 East Asia, 25 Middle East General).

• For those of you who are submitting partial hours (when you worked 50 hours and 20 minutes, for example), please round up to the nearest quarter-hour. So if you coded for 50 hours and 20 minutes, this can be recorded as 50.5 hours. **Never report hours and minutes on an invoice as this isn't clear. E.g. do not report 20 hours and 30 minutes on your invoice. This would instead be 20.5 hours.

• If you need to submit hours from a previous month, be sure to indicate the monthly split in the comments field (ex: 3 hours in October, 100 hours in November)

• If your rate changed partway through the month, please review the manual invoicing process.

The following sections explain some of the questions on the Google form in further detail. These fields will help generate a complete invoice and also speed up the approval process.

What month are you requesting payment for? 

• • Please select the month in which your hour breakdown covers, not the month of submission. For example: July submissions would select June. 

Supervisor

• If applicable select the name of your primary, secondary and third supervisors if applicable. 

Hour Breakdown

• Upload your Hour Breakdown file through the Google Form. The link to the Hour Breakdown will be emailed to you and to your supervisor(s). You can reupload an Hour Breakdown if you need to make corrections, but you cannot delete your previous submission. 

Total hours worked and your hourly rate

• These numbers will appear on your invoice exactly as you enter them into the form. They also will be used to calculate your total invoice amount, which you will no longer enter into the form.

• Check to make sure your total hours worked matches the total hours on your Hour Breakdown.

• You can submit for previous months only if you worked less than five hours that month. You must clarify the monthly split in the comments section.

• Because the form calculates the total invoice amount automatically, you should not fill out the form if your rate changes in the middle of the month. If this affects you, please review the manual invoicing process.

• The form asks for the regional breakdown of your hours, which countries you coded for, and comments, if applicable. These fields will appear on your invoice exactly as you enter them into the form. 

• Do not include bank details here. 

Signature

• Once you have submitted the google form, you will recieve two emails. 

  • Confirmation - This is for your records and displays a proof of the invoice without your signature. 

  • A request to sign your invoice - "Request #X for your review"

    • Review the contents of your submission and click on the [Provide Signature] button. 

    • Here you can either draw or type your signature for your invoice. 

After you submit the form and sign the submission, the form will route through the supervisors you selected. Once the approval process has been completed, you will recieve a PDF copy of your invoice with signature and approvals. 

You will have the opportunity to edit your responses before the Google Form closes. Editing a response will create a new PDF invoice that is sent to you and your supervisor(s) in the same manner. Please try to limit corrections to the Google Form, as the generation of multiple invoices for one person could slow down the finance team’s processing of your invoice.

***SHARED EMAIL Notice***

Follow these instructions if you experience issues relating to the shared apps@acleddata.com during the invoicing process. 

Google relates each form response to a specific Gmail account. If you fill out the form while signed in to the apps@acleddata.com (or any other shared email address), not only will you not receive a generated invoice, but also everyone else with access to that email will be able to see your responses, including your signature file.

Before filling out the Google Form, look at the very top block of text. In the example below, the person is logged in to the apps@acleddata.com email.

There are several things you can try to change the account you are signed in as. You should also follow these steps if you ever see someone else’s responses already filled in. The suggestions are listed in the order in which you should try them. If you have experienced problems with this before that were not solved by the first options, you may want to try one further down the list.

1. Click “Switch account” and log in to your email account.

2. Open an incognito window and fill out the form there.

3. Sign out of all Gmail accounts and resign in to only the email address you want to be associated with your response.

4. Clear your cache and try one of the previous options.

5. Try a different browser.

6. Sign in to a new Google Chrome window as a guest. See more instructions here.

In the end, you want to see something like this screen, where you are signed in to your own email, and you cannot see anyone else’s responses. 

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact your RM or finance@acleddata.com 

Further readings:

Invoicing - Main page

Hours Breakdown