darthbimmer

An excellent example of how to combine leisure travel with business. It cost the company no more than sending you on a shorter, work-only trip and it made you a happier and more productive employee. A win-win arrangement, as you noted.

Not everyone sees it as win-win, though. Two observations:

1) Many people will focus on the fact that you "got a free trip" somewhere. They regard this as unfair or an inappropriate gift. "The company doesn't fly me to visit relatives 7,000 miles away," they snivel. If this attitude is held only by peers your management may be able to ignore it, but many times this attitude is held by the people who work in finance/accounting. They can nix the practice-- either by making it explicitly against policy or by technically allowing it but making the approval process so onerous that managers regard it as infeasible. And sometimes managers themselves hold the attitude that extending a work trip for leisure is a misuse of funds even if it costs the company nothing.

2) Many people in business are reluctant to approve these kinds of arrangements not because they misunderstand win-win but because they're suspicious of abuse. Your two examples seem entirely fair. Not everyone else who asks for an extended trip is so scrupulous about allocating the costs fairly, though. Reasonable suspicion quickly gets written into policy requiring documentation and higher level approval. Bosses may regard that as too much of a burden to pursue in all but truly exceptional cases.

invisible

Here is one more case: policy prohibits staying at customer's location on weekends - one have to pay from his/her own pocket. At the same time policy says that only tickets in Economy class are allowed, but not specifying the amount.

So what a smart consultant will do who is sent to work on 2.5 month project from Singapore to Tokyo? Yep, you are correct - buy fully refundable tickets on SQ leaving Tokyo on Friday afternoon and flying back from Singapore on Sunday evening arriving Monday morning. The guy told me that he spent (and expensed) plane tickets worth of $30000 over course of that 2.5 month.

roberino

Well that's just fraud.

Cris L

Sorry, why would following your companies required policy be fraud?

It's stupid policy, but not fraud!

I'm pretty sure flights that fulfil that time criteria really are likely to be considerably more expensive than other timings, and some flexibility/discretion would have considerably reduced the cost of that project!

Oops! I just noted the fully refundable part... if the flights were not flown, then I agree it would be fraud!

roberino

The way I read your post it seemed like the refundable tickets were bought to be expensed but the flights weren't flown and were refunded. Is that not the case?

Silver Fox

Our execs are very flexible. The recently upgraded company jet fleet is always available to them for personal travel at company cost.

invisible

No, you got it wrong.

The policy says - if you stay on weekends, you have to pay for hotel. Policy also says that you must fly in Y, but does not set dollar limit. So he bought refundable tickets in Y and had round trip flight every week.

And he was quite correct in that decision - due to nature of business he might needed to stay that weekend if there was business justification. So company instead of spending $500 per week to keep him there for two nights, they spent $2500 for his roundtrip flight. So for 12 weeks company saved $6000 according to the policy and spent $30000 on his plane tickets.

mmff

What?

roberino

Look up.

Badenoch

Only if the immediate supervisor is approving expenses. If they are approved by someone else then you may get stuck with them. I've been stuck with large bills more than once and had to fight to be reimbursed.

invisible

Hope my explanation clarifies this matter.

Artpen100

This is frequently a way to greatly reduce travel expense, and I do it very often, unless I am on the committee overseeing the conference and feel pressure to help the conference meet its contract with the hotel for minimum occupancy.

Proudelitist

Years ago I worked with a company that (at the time anyhow) had the best expense policy I have ever worked with. It was so simple it was pure genius:

You get X per month. You must complete all work using only X. If you come in UNDER X, you may roll the extra into next month's X.

They didn't care if I spent X on bubble gum and yo yo's, so long as the work was done. I never had to justify anything on any expense report, provided I was within budget.

Additionally, I was completely free in my bookings. We did not use a travel service. As I was on the road almost every week, I became very very good at finding the best deals. I used Hotwire for rental cars and saved a ton. Sometimes for hotels when I began to be able to guess which ones they were. I was staying at 5 star resorts for 3 star prices. I was eating beautiful dinners. I was collecting miles left and right and flying in F most of the time, and I was always under budget so by Q4 all the budget I stacked could be spent and I was living high on the hog WITHIN policy.

And it was better for them too, from an accounting standpoint. If you work out what you can afford and dedicate that money to a bucket, you make it very easy to predict expenses. If you don't spend time worrying why an employee's dinner was 50 dollars because the work is done and within budget, you save an immense amount of time and trouble.

Ahhh. Glory days.

roberino

Indeed

DeweyCheathem

The issue here is, how much of your productivity and work effort was detracted from the actual purpose of your job, to optimizing your use of the travel budget. Most companies have staff (or contract it out to a vendor) that is ostensibly expert in doing just that, whereas presumably, your core competency and reason for employment was something else.

Some aspects of travel cost savings can be trivially easy, such as staying over on a Saturday night when it knocks the airfare down by $1000 and only adds $300 in ancillary expenses, but others require more actual expertise in the field.