I am trying to recall in > 25 years of my carrier what companies' business travel policies/expenses reimbursements looked like and how they changed over the years.

My observation - currently in the US (I'll mention other regions below where the situation is quite different), is that starting from mid-size companies (and even small companies as well) the current trend is to limit employee-paid expenses as much as possible. Employees are issued company cards and they must use that card for all official business.

In the last two very large companies (with >100K employees for one and >250K for another) this was pretty much the rule since circa 2010 - all travel must be booked via the travel portal (read - Concur), and company-issued credit card (read - AMEX) must be used for all such transactions. Airfare cost is directly charged via a different account (not AMEX card), so the employee only needs to submit an expense report for meals/car rentals and small related expenses. Upon approval, the charges on the AMEX card are paid from the company's account, an employee does not need to deal with anything.

Deviation from the rules usually involves manual authorizations from HR/Travel management, providing and getting approval of scans of receipts, approval from line manager, and so on to the point that managers politely but firmly requested employees not to create exceptions and more work and complications for themselves and managers

The situation gets even more simplified with the introduction of per diems and dropping the requirement to provide receipts less than a certain (like $10-$20) amount. My wife's small tech company has such a policy - booking via Concur (airfare is charged to the company account), paying for travel charges using AMEX, no need to provide a receipt for less than $20, per diem based on geography. Employees are allowed to book hotels outside of Concur as long as they use AMEX, provide full receipts and charge per night within the allowed geographical area and price range, like $100-$200/night.

My current company is rather an exception to the above-mentioned rules despite it being quite a large (>25000 employess) international conglomerate - it feels like it is in the beginning of the 2000s with the following rules. North American business travel must be booked via Concur, airfare is paid by the company directly. Hotels and rental cars must be booked by Concur as well. However, there is no company-issued credit card at all - employees must use their own credit cards to pay all other business-related expenses and submit expense reports for reimbursement. There is a per diem rule based on geography (quite conservative, I'd say, for example, par day allowance for meals in San Francisco/New York is $65, Houston - $55). Oh yes, for any international travel - one has to call and book airfare/hotel thru the company travel agency.



And for these of you thinking that dealing with ERs is a hassle... well, here is 'The Rest of the Story (C):

I spent 10 years in Singapore, working for one very large technology company. We were issued a locally denominated (in SGD) AMEX Green card and were required to use it for all travel expenses, but it was the worst combination possible.

First of all - all travel charges were going with the AMEX card - airfare, rentals, hotels, etc and the employee was responsible to settle the bill with the AMEX. At the same time, travel must be booked 3-6 weeks before the start, so you could imagine - you had several thousand $ in airfare charges already on the card before even your travel started that you had to pay the bill even before you submit it for reimbursement.

Then, charges needed to be reported in the transaction currency, then entered into Concur which used its own exchange rate that had nothing to do with the real exchange rate with AMEX - it had 3.5% fee. So to get this accurately reflected, you needed to manually alter the exchange rate in Concur for every single such transaction and then submit AMEX statement as proof.

Plus, for every single expense, regardless of the amount, paper/electronic receipt was required and paper receipts must be properly scanned and uploaded in Concur.

And if you think things ended here, Travel/ER reports/approvals were handled by the Shared Services team that was outsourced in the Philippines and they had close to 70% rejection on reports, like you should not be spending $50 on dinner in SF, all expenses that were without receipts were automatically denied.

The situation got so bad that employee complaints reached to board level and just before pre-Covid they implemented per diem and dropped receipt requirements for less than $15 expenses, but everything on AMEX, setting the bill and exchange rate situation has not changed.

So... if you read this much, what is your great and horror stories about how companies are dealing with business travel expenses? I want to hear stories not necessarily from starups but rather established businesses and mid-large size companies.

Thanks