I'm looking for a program to help me claim back the cost of work-related phone calls. At present, it's a painful process, working out who I rang from the number on the phone bill, then adding up the chargeable ones. But I can't find anything ready-made that will help with the process.
- Mobile phone books have names to go with the numbers. I've downloaded/copy-pasted my phonebook into an Excel spreadsheet so at least I can search a number I don't recognise.
- I can download an electronic version of my monthly bill in CSV format. In Excel, I can sort that by number, to group them together.
What I really want is a utility to go through the bill and replace numbers with the names from my list. Excel Lookups don't appear to be reliable for this, though I could write it as a Unix shell script
Plus,
- If the number (in the Excel name list) is marked Personal, mark it as unbillable
- If the number (in the Excel name list) is marked with a Company name, mark it as billable
- If the number on the bill is not in the phone list, leave or highlight it to be checked
Then, produce reports of the billable calls, sorted by date/time OR by Client company
Nice-to-haves:
- An enhancement that will read a Nokia save file (.nfb or .nfc) and create the name/number list from that so I don't have to update it manually. Or by synching my phone with MS Outlook to help the download & creation of the Excel list, though that raises other problems - like multiple numbers for a person.
- A standalone program that doesn't need Excel or other paid-for products. A Web-based tool might be nice, but security would be a major issue.
This seems like an obvious idea to me, but if it's a new idea, feel free to write/patent/sell it (so long as I get a free copy :-)
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