My fellow Shoppers, please comment on the job boards you prefer and why. Plus any accounting tips or spreadsheet ideas, thanks!

I like how JobSlinger Plus (subscription that gives me a calendar of mainly all my SASSIE assignments) helps me, but I may want to move away from that monthly fee to a free APP that does similar or even better functions. Or if there isn't an APP for it, then I'd like to figure out a Dashboard system, thinking of listing a few job boards side-by-side with maybe HootSuite or pinning them with other Social Networking sites. Do you guys find that Twitter, or FaceBook contribute much to your job lead search? I kind of like just having ones roll into my email. But I really want to move away from linear, since opening emails takes forever...unless Schedulers list the BOTH the City, State and what kind of shop (generic, if necessary) IN THE SUBJECT THREAD.

I love and respect Volition's contribution to Mystery Shopping but their job board is not fully integrated. I've been experimenting with some free multi-MSC job boards such as iSecretShop and a couple others who's names elude me at the moment...but some I'm not too sure of, as to whether I will get the personalized assistance like I do when I can contact my Schedulers or the other main MSC support contact numbers. I would like to do more texting as I do get unlimited, but it can tend to be linear, one-by-one...I also posted a new topic on MSC Mobile Apps...so I will check that thread here in this board.

I'm kind of dismayed with some archaic reporting systems, but they have some of my favorite shops! I'm spoiled by some MSC that make my shop dates, invoices and list dates amounts were paid available for me currently and even years past.

I know...I know...I do keep an Excel Spreadsheet, but it is so nice to match up invoices instead of a wildly colored coded Excel (or Google Drive type spreadsheets)! I want to be able to export stuff into Quickbooks to TurboTax, etc.

I noticed that PayPal has just an "okay" exporting system for Accounts Receivables but unless the MSC gives job#, dates or description it is tough matching the payments up with the sometimes 60-90 day delay in payments...especially when they make lump sum payments...anyone else catch my drift? Any good tracking APPS or homemade systems or tips for accounting?

Shopping WA, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and road trips through California and occasional trips to places with a tropical paradise.

If it were that easy, this place would be overrun with shoppers and none of us would be making any money.

The search for work is part of the job. There is no app that will go out and read all the job boards for you and create your routes for you.

The shop part of mystery shopping is the EASY part. The work comes in searching for work, keeping track of your schedule, laying out the routes, doing the reports and then doing the necessary bookkeeping to track your pay for your tax return.

Lots of newbies come into this industry for the free burgers, and quickly bail out once they realize there is a lot of hard work involved.

This is a good thing, because if everyone who came here stayed because everything was easy, no shop fee would ever rise above $5. The work involved helps weed out people who think this is all fun and games and tons of easy money.

Not to say there aren't useful tools. But what you're describing is a lot of stuff to try to integrate. I think most shoppers use excel spreadsheets. Someone developed some kind of app to track what you're owed but it was not free and I don't remember what it was.

For figuring out what you are being paid for . . . it is rare that you are paid for shops out of sequence. So if you have 8 $20 shops for a company and they send you $40, it is likely you are being paid for the 2 oldest of them. A spreadsheet makes it super easy to reorganize shops by completion date and note the pay for the oldest ones first. If things start going awry, such as you only ever did 8 shops and you got paid for 2 in the first payment and only 5 in the next payment and aren't seeing payment for the 8th shop, then it is time to look more closely.

The company's website is likely to show you which shops you were actually being paid for with various payments received and if you still need assistance, contacting the company in most cases is not rocket science.

With the advent of remote deposit, all of this has also gotten simpler because you can retain the actual check sent so that you can discuss with company accounting what check numbers and amounts you have received. This sort of completes the cycle as the payment information is available on Paypal and if a direct deposit was made, every company that does that for me shows pretty clearly on their website what the payment was for.

If color coding and such doesn't work for you on Excel, you can use Quicken or Quick Books accounting software and find a way to have it alert you to what hasn't been paid and do all your recording there. I just found that Excel was so much simpler so after a brief foray into that realm years ago just backed off and went back to Excel.