OhHim

Only changes for my firm since 2007 have been:
- upping the meal daily reimbursement limit (NOT a per diem and it can be circumvented with approval from senior folks) from $35 to $50/day,
- the elimination of automatically providing us with upgrade certificates for longer haul (3hr+) domestics,
- business class only being now permitted for transcontinental instead of "international" (i.e. can't do Chicago-Toronto 2 hour hops in first - but I'd rather take Porter to downtown over United First to YYZ anyhow) - and you can up your flight home frequency on international assignments if you fly economy

Smarter procurement orgs inside clients have recently been forcing a fixed travel $ that we manage to, and I'll usually just publish the team expense numbers to everyone so we have an incentive to do the right thing (i.e. book the $600 non-preferred/status airline fare vs. $1200 to maintain 1K/platinum, take a subway in from the airport vs. car service if times are comparable, walk the extra 5 minutes from the long term on-airport lots vs. short term on-airport lots, etc..). Other teams have been using end-of-project offsites as rewards if they can keep the expense numbers down.

Hotels have been mostly 4-star (hiton/westin/marriott) in bigger cities, but fixed budgets have forced me to negotiate with hotels and leverage client corporate rates when available. I'll only rarely book a Y fare outright (unless I'm left with it as an only option) since change fees are still usually dwarfed by the premium, or I'll just fly SWA if I know things are likely to change (and get the credit and apply to other flights if things change).

I've usually guided my team to "spend money as if it is your own", but have seen colleagues do some occasional dumb things when expenses haven't been visible (i.e. not check out of their rooms for 1 night if they needed to make a mid-week trip to another site).

blr1222

LOL

Alpha

We do litigation consulting, so we're always traveling with attorneys. They are a difficult bunch to out-spend, and their hourly rates are typically higher than ours, so we rarely run into problems with expenses.

Izz24703

I'm actually curious about the travel policies at Accenture. If anyone working there can PM me, it would be very helpful

bpauker

How would your company handle this travel expense policy situation, and what would you do? Traveling from US-base to far away destination. Policy "allows" C/J travel, but self and co-workers, senior leadership often book coach and upgrade. In hunting for airfare on the necessary dates, it appears Y travel is about $2k, but no guarantee of upgrading since space is not confirmable yet. C/J is about $6K but involves a two stop itinerary with really lousy schedule. F on the schedule/routing that makes the most sense is about 6700.

I'm tempted to book F and kick in the extra 700 out of pocket in case the expense police come knocking. I'm also tempted to book F regardless and say that the time saved enroute each way (not to mention the peace of mind of not having to deal with an extra connection) justifies the slight premium over the business class ticket I would other be allowed to book.

What say ye? Has anyone had a similar experience?

Often1

I would book and be reimbursed F. Time is money. $700 isn't much for a 2-change itinerary and risk of delay. But, I'm with you. Even if couldn't be reimbursed, life is too short. I'd gladly shell out the $700.

bpauker

I booked my trip in F and saved screenshots do document my rationale for booking F vs. C. I've already received the automated nasty-gram about my policy violation. Wish me luck!

hylander9

A lot has been said about what you can charge and expense but can anyone say anything about the actual travel?
For the big firms (McKinsey, Bain, BCG) when you do travel how long is it for? Are we talking days, weeks, a month?

gfunkdave

Usually Mon-Thu.

greathustle

You may hear about the 3-4-5 schedule. 3 nights away from home, 4 days on site at the client, 5 day work week. This sounds nice in practice but doesn't happen too often. If you're coming from a long distance, you may feel pressure to travel on Sunday or take redeyes. I redeye all my transcons as I just don't feel comfortable showing up for work at 3PM on Monday. And in higher-burn projects, a 5 day work week just isn't realistic. I find 4/4/6 or 4/5/6 to be more common, but at least in both cases some of the work can be done from your home city.

xmlsoa

I wonder how I missed this thread.

I am curious as to which firms make Expense Reports/ Reimbursement easy / automated?

I know some firms where people charge Travel, Hotel, Food & Cell on their own cards and then fill up expense reports / per diems & most times have to save, organize receipts (then tag them to match the expense report).

I also remember some firms had credit cards issued in consultants name and the "stuff thats reimbursable" can be easily marked and its paid for by the company without coming from the consultants pocket until reimbursement (like the former scenario).

I've always found it a chore & pain to do expense reports.. boring.

emma69

I used to have a company issued Amex in my name and the company would pay Amex directly on my behalf. The catch, however, was I still had to submit an expense report for approval as well, and within x days of receiving the bill to allow payment to be processed (I was still liable and had to pay and reclaim if I was tardy!)

A charge may seem obvious on the Amex bill, e.g. Hilton $867 but in reality that could be $500 in room charges, $100 in food, both permissible, but then $267 of in room porn movies, which are clearly not a valid expense. Thus companies (and the client paying disbursements) often want actual receipts. At another company who hired large numbers of consultants (large firms mentioned) we had in the engagement contract the right to ask for breakdowns of expenses (which in turn meant individuals had to turn over receipts - whether or not that was their own in house policy or not - essentially we had some previous issues with food charges eg working dinner $800 on invoice, reasonable for 20 people, outrageous for 2 people, and guess what we were discovering!!!)

thegoderic

I used too work for an IT 3 letter acronym where not only did you have to claim on a credit card and be reimbursed, but you had to break down hotel bills in the system to cover items with different tax treatments (so 1 htel bill could be a dozen line items in the expense report) and the expenses would not be paid until all receipts had been received and checked. It was a total utter and complete pain from beginning to end.

I now work in Industry where we have a company issued card where they settle the bill directly and all you need to do is to periodically allocate charges to cost codes and send receipts in - much better.

Incidentally our travel policy is Y for less than 4 hours, J for more than 4, but 4 hours refers to the journey time not the flight time. So living in Scotland, travelling to almost anywhere in Europe involving a change will take more than 4 hours and therefore be eligible for J travel. I tend to self downgrade to Y though as it is plain daft to pay prices J for short haul.

thegoderic

Working for one of the big firms, I spent 200 - 240 nights in hotels for 6 years straight. OK 10 - 15 of these may have been for leisure, but it is a huge amount of time away from home.

As far as travel in concerned, my peak in 2005 was 211 flight sectors in 1 year, and I never dropped below 120.

timfountain

I don't see a problem here, care to elaborate?