My company has ~90k employees worldwide.

Employees who travel are issued a company credit card and are expected to pay all travel expenses with it. Cash is ok in small amounts, but using a personal card is frowned upon. All flights/hotels/rental cars must be booked through Egencia; not doing so will generate an exception that requires 1-over manager approval to clear. The card is in the employee's name and we are technically responsible, but we use Concur for reimbursement - all card charges appear in Concur, we enter the expense details for each charge, and once approved the credit card company is paid directly. As near as I can tell, we issue batch payments every Wednesday and Friday. Meaning that if my expense report is approved on Monday, the payment is sent two days later. In eight years of 85% travel I have never been on the hook to cover a payment.

We are allowed $75 per day for meals (recently increased from $50, which was terrible). Have to provide photo of receipts for any expense larger than $25. Hotel prices are based on geography, so might max out at $110/night in Hattiesburg, MS but allow $275 or more in San Francisco, NYC, or DC. We have a pretty smokin' contract rate with Hertz and National, most locations are ~$38/day for midsize. Egencia suggests an "in policy" flight based on date & time, and we are given $50 leeway to pick the flights we want. This is *fairly* flexible - we can often get around an exception to that when we can show that the "preferred" flight has a 5 hour layover or something.

Hasn't always been like that though. When I went to work for my current department 20 years ago, I had to pay all expenses out of pocket and submit a report to my manager with receipts for EVERY expense stapled to sheets of paper. If I tipped a valet in cash I had to write the information on a piece of paper and then staple THAT piece of paper to the sheet of paper with the other receipts.

Shortly after going to work for this manager, he called me because a training class that I needed had a seat open up. He calls me on Thursday and says that I need to be in Santa Ana, CA first thing Monday morning. So I buy a short-notice plane ticket out of pocket, pay for a week of hotel, rental car, and meals. While I am at this training, he calls me again to tell me that as soon as I get home he needs me in Atlanta for two weeks. By the time I get home from there I'm about $4,500 deep in expenses. I carefully and diligently jump through all of the hoops, stuff this massive report into a manilla envelope, and send it to my boss. End of the month comes, and no check yet. So I just made the minimum payment on my card because the money should be there any day. End of the next month - still nothing. Made another payment. Waited some more. End of the second full month, STILL nothing. Took the money out of savings and paid it off. I call my boss (and remember that I am still new on this job, so trying to not make waves...) and say "Umm..... do expense reports always take 3 months to reimburse?" And the A-hole replies "Oh! no - I have it sitting right here on my desk. I was waiting to see if anyone else on the team was going to submit anything and I was going to send them in all at once. Do you need me to go ahead and submit it???"

This at a time when he *knew* he was only paying me $40k/year. And he's blithely sitting on more than 10% of my annual salary.

So, that's my story!