I try to use my personal CC whenever possible on business transactions. So many points going to waste otherwise!;)

Cash advance should include covering hotel rate PLUS TAXES. A general daily food allowance ($30, $50, $75). Car rental expenses PLUS TAXES. Gas, Parking, Tolls, etc....

You will fill out an expense form usually that details every expense and pay back the company the remaining balance of any funds un-used. If you ended up charging to cover more funds then allotted then you wouldn't necessarily be that hard up since a majority of your expenses would had been pre-paid.

BTW some hotels will allow charges to a company, has that been looked at?

IMHO I wouldn't travel on your own dime with a company that takes "months" to expense back. If this wasn't part of your job description then why take on this burden?

I work for the government of the United States of America. :)

Travel is handled in accordance with the Federal Travel Regulations, supplemented by Agency policy, Division policy and local management policy [all increasing restrictions]. At my Agency we are currently mandated to use only the SmartPay2 cards for all official travel expenses. While the SmartPay2 cards bear the logo of the United States, each card bears the name of the holder who is personally responsible for ensuring timely payment of all charges to their assigned card number and is liable for late fees, interest, etc. My Agency usually reimburses in a timely manner once all appropriate documentation is submitted via the specified channel(s). Airfare is almost always charged directly to the Agency master account so this charge does not appear on individual accounts. Please see the FTR for more information.

As others have mentioned, I too have worked for a number of organizations [public, private, non-profit, academic, start-ups, etc.] and travel expense policy has varied wildly. I have been burned more than once by an organization that had me travel on my own dime with a promise to reimburse but then later changed their tune. Both were start-ups in Asia. And, No, the amounts that I was seeking to have reimbursed were not large, unusual or non-business related expenses. So, I think I have learned my lesson. Having written that ... since I have pretty decent credit and value earning airline miles and hotel points, I would prefer to be able to use my personal cards to increase such earnings.

My dream travel arrangement would be this:

- Corp card available, but only mandated for rental cars. (This is common to ensure full primary cover on business rentals.) Ideally, if a corp card exists, I should be able to participate in the associated rewards program. My first job involved 5 years of 100% travel, all on Diner's Club, and we were heavy users of their rewards program during that time.

- All flights bookable online via a corporate travel portal. Do not make me speak to humans to book travel, unless I have a special request to do something irregular or outside normal travel guidelines. Ideally, I'd also have the option of booking Southwest for short nonstop flights. (e.g., Booking directly at Southwest.com should be allowable for routes where that makes sense.)

- Let me pick my hotels, even if there is a cost guideline per city. Again, online, I do not want to speak to humans about this. If the company has negotiated $169/nt. at Joe's Fleabag Hotel, but I can find $169/nt. at Marriott.com or SPG.com, I should be able to book it.

- The preferred rental car agency is National.

- I've flipped on this one from earlier in my career: before I favored submitting meal receipts; now I'd favor a straight per diem (provided it's reasonable...). I hate receipts for simple personal lunches/dinners. Obviously client dinners would still need to have receipts.

- I can use my own credit cards if I choose, and the reimbursement is auto-deposited to my account within 2-3 weeks.

My current company is good on everything *except* we still have to talk to humans to book travel. The first time you do that, you are mildly amused, thinking it's a quaint throwback to the travel days of a bygone era, a bygone century. Then you wait on hold one time and the quaintness disappears instantly. On the plus side, if I read off precise airports, departure times, and flight numbers, they'll book what I want. If I provide an exact destination address, I'll get the hotel I want. And the reimbursement is quick, and the cars are National. So I guess it's not all that bad... :)

In OP's specific situation, his entire organization only does 12 out-of-town trips per year. This doesn't call for a systemic solution, but can be dealt with on a one-off basis.

The problem created by the organization is likely a matter of thoughtlessness. Mostly executive travel, not large sums and it's all easily handled.

Plain and simple, a cash advance in an organization with 12 trips/year is easy to handle, account for and reconcile. But, if nobody asks, it won't happen.

Situation is quite different from company to company.

In States I had following experiences:

- startup (about 30 people): all travel is charged on one of the founder's corp business credit card, earning him 20K-45K miles monthly. He was just calling to Chase to issue additional cards for employees.

- medium size public company about 200 people: there is corporate portal to book flights; hotel and car rental one can booked by employee based on travel policy. One can use personal card for expenses and submit expense reports online for reimbursement which was processed quite fast - in a week maximum.

- large private company from Chicago: all travel - air, car rental, hotel must be booked via corporate portal and paid by the corporate credit card. Credit card bill is settled by the company's expense department. However once they screwed up payment and I got 30 days late payment in my credit history. It took me 9 month to clean up this mess. No need to say how pissed I was, but HR/expenses dep did not ever care.


Now I am working in Singapore in branch of one of Fortune 50 company and had encountered the weirdest and most inconvenient travel policies so far:

- air and rental car travel must be booked via corp travel agency via a phone call. Agency outsources everything to India. Should I continue? At the beginning, four times in a row they screwed up my flight bookings. Now I only send them emails with booking information taken from ITA Matrix and telling them to book exactly this flight using this fare.
- hotel can be booked via corp hotel booking site, but there are some (weird) guidelines. One for example was that in Tokyo I had to book 4* hotel 5 train stops away but could not book a hotel which was three blocks away from the office (and twice cheaper) because it was not in the system.
- finally, the cherry on a top: for all business expenses I must use corp AMEX card, however I must settle the bill monthly using my personal funds. I must submit expense reports to HR/expense department and they will issue payment (after manager's approval of the expenses). Process takes about 30-40 days.

When I told about this process to our US and european colleagues they've been really surprised because they use corp AMEX card for travel, but they never see the bill, it is handled by expenses department there. However here in Singapore I've asked around and the above practice is quite common.

Interesting would be to hear stories from other people/part of the world.

This is basically the employee fronting money to the employer and in my opinion is wrong. Cash advance.

+1.

With only 12 trips a year, they should alternatively be able to reimburse rapidly. Like, very rapidly... This should not be a problem for a credible, trustworthy organization.

One thing about having employees paying upfront is that they certainly get their claims in promptly! You don't have to chase them so much.

However, we don't do that - we give company credit cards and we're forever chasing them to submit their claims. I can't claim to be a paragon myself so I'm probably too soft on them.

OP's employer is doing everything like my previous employers.
Actually, I even had months of travelling and since the expenses were reimbursed once a month, I had for one month EUR 5.5 K of expenses, that was PAINFUL.

Now, I have a company credit card but it's not the norm, at least not in Europe. But it also depends on your rank in the company.

Fair enough if the accounting department is equally prompt in reimbursing the expenses. I've worked for organizations where expense reports were treated like any other receivable and typically paid in 90 days. :mad:

The companies I prefer are those with clear expense rules, per diems that recognize the differences among countries, understand that not all legitimate expenses will have receipts, pay promptly and don't demand the employee to pay everything up front. They trust me and in return get a lot of slack. I am probably more diligent than they are about what I submit.

The ones I loathe are the chickenpoop departments where the rules change without notice, who nickel and dime every receipt, comb through everything, challenge anything they think might be personal, go insane at the appearance of a mini-bar charge and will not accept any charge unless there is a receipt. They get my most creative submissions such and I can be very, very creative. ;)

Yeah, our lot pays them in the next pay if you get them in on time (about one week before payday). They're quite meticulous about that. I know our wages accountant even works overtime to get some late ones reimbursed. It's better for them too. They don't want unexpected cash expense claims messing up their cost forecast.

One other option, although how easy it is to arrange I am not sure these days.

We had someone (who was not at the time an employee of our company) who needed to fly and stay in a hotel on our company's business. The person didn't have a credit card (at all). So what I did was work with a travel agent, who would accept a company cheque from us, to book and pay for his travel. I had to raise a PO based on the travel agent's quote (which included a buffer in case prices changed), pay the travel agent, and she then issued us a cheque back for the difference.

Emma69, we still manage that with a few of our employees, especially consultants to whom we don't give company credit cards to. That is, arrange to pay it through the travel agent like you described. In some smaller places in Europe that we use regularly, we have built up a relationship that they can invoice us direct.