Happy New Year!

This year, as you know, Cru staff are navigating a new insurance carrier and a credit card for medical co-pays and expenses. If you’re like me, you’ll have plenty of these charges by the end of the year, so you’ll need a way to track your benefit card activity.

This post is not just for my Cru reader. Other readers will also benefit from the free spreadsheet.

I’m refining my organization ideas and reimbursement spreadsheets for you in light of the 2026 changes for Cru staff.  I’ll write more in upcoming articles.

Tracking Your Benefits Card (Free Spreadsheet Download)

I created three versions of a Google Sheets spreadsheet to track activity on your benefits card. Follow this link for the three spreadsheet templates.

The three tabs are for the three versions:

• For Two Cards – a “His and Hers” version that filters on the blue and pink card numbers in order to check activity by card.
• For One Card  – for a single staff member, the filter is by status: Pending, Closed, or Review. The statuses are automatically color-coded.
• For a Family – in this version, you filter by the patient’s name.

If you prefer to filter by a different column or multiple columns, Google Sheets allows it.

If you want an Excel version of a template, you should be able to copy and paste from Google. If you have a problem with that, contact me.

Keep track of your expenses in your spreadsheet as they occur.

About Columns

I color-coded the different types of purchases in Column B, so I easily spot them. These colors match the colors in the spreadsheet for manual claims, which I should have ready for you this month.

If you have a “Patient” column for a family spreadsheet:

• Use consistent names.
• Your children’s expenses may be covered by either parent, or you might want to “assign” a card to each child to minimize confusion.
• Your college student might have a second card from one of the parents for his purchases.

The Status column helps you keep up with each line item. The three statuses should cover every situation.

• “Pending” is where you start with an expense.
• “Closed” is when you’re satisfied the expense went through.
• “Review” might occur when your EOB appears to differ from a doctor’s bill or in other scenarios.

In my sample, I had a root canal recently. I paid the procedure amount and an out-of-pocket $150 with my P&A Benefit card. I was relieved to be able to pay for both parts of the bill at the time of service.

The full amount showed up two days later on the P&A website under “Claims Paid.” I also see the EOB on the MetLife website. I think I can mark this expense as “Closed.” (I’m as new to this as you are.)

About Receipts

I don’t think we need to keep copies of receipts for benefits card purchases. I’m going to keep a sales slip for an OTC purchase until I see the purchase is “closed.”

If you have a Walmart, CVS, or other app, you can look up your purchase history in it if needed.

About EOBs

If you only have an EOB every few months, you may not need the Claim # column. Another option is to rename the column “EOB” and place a check mark (✓) in the cell once you’ve verified receipt of the EOB for the service. This column is important because it shows that you’ve received and viewed the EOB for that office visit.

If you have frequent EOBs (and they tend to be the same amount), I recommend grabbing the claim number from the medical and dental insurance websites and pasting it into this column. This will help you avoid confusion for multiple visits or multiple patients.

The Additional Charges Column would be for expenses incurred after an appointment.

• For instance, the doctor’s staff may charge the wrong amount.
• I don’t know what will happen when we pay a certain amount at the doctor’s office, but the EOB includes a deductible or co-insurance. This column could be used for that.

EOBs will also be on your Manual Claims spreadsheet I’m working on, since you may have mileage, parking, and tolls to reimburse. I assume manual claims are also where we clear up discrepancies. Let me know if you find out before I do.

Extra Ideas

• If you are the shopper in the family, get a duplicate of your spouse’s P&A card so you have it with you.
• Share your ideas and what you learn from this new change with me. I’m interested in learning whether you have special needs that these spreadsheets don’t address.

I’ll have more medical reimbursement help for the next several posts.

NOTE: The hunting dog photo is by Dima Khudorozhkov on Unsplash