gobluetwo

Same here. It's usually rather easy to call and have a different rate (client, AAA, whatever) rate applied to a corporate booking. I have my admin assistant call to see if a client's rate or other discounted rate is cheaper than my company's contracted rates and make the change. This preserves the booking on our travel system (which ties into our accounting/financials systems on the back end) while also saving money.

Of course, I do know folks who want to book the fancy "out of policy" luxury hotels at priceline rates and do try to game the system in the way described above.

A buddy of mine books rental cars on his own, but submits reimbursements for mileage on a personal car. For most of his trips, this ends up earning him some additional money, as the rentals + gas tend to be cheaper than the mileage reimbursements for longer roadtrips, and saves wear/tear on his car.

Proudelitist

That's fraud, isn't it?

RichMSN

I used to go BOS-IAH almost every week for a while.

Back then, the nonstop was on CO and it cost $1900 roundtrip. The DL flight through ATL cost $200 to $300.

I used to take the connection cause it just killed me to spend that kind of money. Then I noticed I was one of few who did that and I stopped.

Agneisse

Often1

To be fair, your employer appears to have agreed to abide by that policy. At some point, policing these things and then fly-specking invoices for how many sugars someone had in their coffee, becomes more than it's worth. Or it's worth it and you lump it.

Agneisse

MissJ

I've had one of those clients. I had to hound our people to code everything correctly but felt bad because it was such a pain for all of us. If a water or something that looked like it might be an adult beverage slipped past me, the client would reject and make me revise the invoice. Yay! No short pay, I had to revise and resubmit.

I've been in charge of travel policies at multiple companies (I'm a controller) and being one who traveled myself, always did my best to keep it reasonable. But people really, really abuse corporate travel and the only times I ever had to get strict were direct results of someone doing something completely ridiculous. Anything outside of policy in our booking system came to me for approval and if I trusted you and you wrote in a valid reason on the request, it was always approved. "Cheaper flights all had connections and added multiple hours to trip" Yep, approved. "Client meeting is at 1 and cheaper flight doesn't get in until 11:30" approved, of course. People give up a lot to travel for work. I know it can be fun to see the world, but I also know how many times I've been away when something I wanted to do was going on, friends were out having fun, I just wanted to sit on my own couch, etc. and I really think people should remember that when creating policies. Most of us work much longer hours when on the road and give up a lot of our own time to do so.

I hope I haven't already told this (long thread) but I once got into it with our CFO because I flew on a Monday and he thought I should have been in the office that day. First, the person I was meeting with wasn't in the office on Monday so there's that.. but I had already flown for work the previous two weekends. I just wanted to not travel on my person time three weekends in a row. I really didn't think that was unreasonable. Of course that job actually stressed me into being physically sick and asked me to go above and beyond pretty much 24/7 so yeah.

darthbimmer

MissJ, you seem like the kind of finance officer I like to have reading my reports. I strain to stay within policy guidelines most of the time when they're reasonable, and when I can't I am happy to explain why. E.g., "Purchased $140 more expensive flight because cheapest option had additional connection arriving 4 hours later." In turn I appreciate back office staff who understand the context of why such things are appropriate and are willing to cut me slack when, say, two of my $10 claims lack receipts in a $1,000+ expense report.

der_saeufer

No more so than claiming mileage at the standard rate for my 10-year-old Corolla that cost almost nothing to maintain, insure, or register and got 40mpg. In a previous position that had me driving my POV to remote sites from time to time I made a ton of money off mileage. Of course, the flipside to that is that if I banged up my car, I'd have been on my own, which would've eaten up all that "profit" on the mileage rate.

The IRS mileage rate is intended to be an average for the total cost of car ownership including depreciation, insurance, maintenance, etc. so people who drive old econoboxes always turn a profit and people who drive new luxury SUVs nearly always lose money.

The employee who rents a car himself is driving a personal vehicle. If he smashes it, the employer doesn't have to pay the rental company for the damage, and it's highly unlikely the employer would pay for damages to others (sure, the employer could get sued and would probably have to pay, but realistically the employee's insurance and/or rental firm's insurance would pay and that'd be the end of it). If it breaks down, the employer doesn't have to pay the employee for the time he spends waiting for help.

An employer absolutely could prohibit the practice, but renting a car and claiming mileage isn't per se fraudulent. The employee is assuming extra liability and being paid for it.

For the dumb thing my employer has done: I once had someone deny reimbursement for a $4.50 bus ride to the airport because I didn't have a receipt. The "no receipts required under $75" rule didn't sway her. Next time I took a cab for $60 and got a receipt. My supervisor thought it was hilarious. The admin person's supervisor was not amused, and my future bus rides were paid.

Edit: Almost forgot one. I briefly worked for a medical software company. They made us submit receipts for every sandwich, cup of coffee, whatever, no matter how low the price and/or daily total was. There was a companywide dust-up over a group of people who had expensed cans of Red Bull/Monster/whatever in the airport and been denied despite their colleagues $5 lattes being reimbursed. The policy later changed to stop "caffeination discrimination". My pet peeve was that it was OK to have a $30 steak and $8 piece of cake for dinner, but if dinner was an $8 burger and a $4 pint of beer, no $4 for you. The US government does a lot of stupid, indefensible stuff, but the location-based flat per diem makes everyone's life so much easier.

cbn42

I don't see how it's fraud. He just rented a car to use as his personal car for that time period. It's no different than packing a lunch and pocketing the per-diem meal allowance.

If I claim mileage reimbursement for my personal car, and then use my personal car which is a small sedan that costs nowhere near 55 cents per mile to operate, I make some additional money too. Is that fraud as well?

warakorn

One example:
A company is billing the client for travel costs and the client pays them.
The reimbursment of the travel costs to the employee takes a long time - company receives money from client, before reimbursing the employee.

Another example:
Two employees sharing a taxi. They receive the receipt from the taxi driver. Both employees claim a reimbursement for one receipt through their travel app -> OCR software of the travel software detects it and notifies the assigned manager. Both employees were fired on the spot.

Proudelitist

The thing about fraud is that it involves deception. With mileage, they are giving you that money no matter what car you drive as per IRS guidelines. They know that. You are not changing or altering anything on a report. When you claim and receive money for something you did not consume..THAT's where the fraud is. So if you rent a car but tell the company you are driving your own car and collect personal mileage, that's fraud. If you alter the truth on your expense reports, by fabrication or ommission, to get a profit, you are committing fraud.

Your own personal liabilities on your rental car are irrelevant to wheather or not the act is fraudulent. That's a red herring.

emma69

I don't believe it is fraudulent, unless you are claiming both the mileage and the rental cost. The reason being how you happen to have the car is irrelevant - say your regular car got rear-ended the day before your business trip, your insurance company provides you with a rental while yours is being fixed. It makes absolutely no difference that you put in your mileage at 55c/m as you would with your regular car. How you happen to have a car (lease, purchased, borrowed from a friend, one of these car share programs) shouldn't matter for the pure mileage claims - insurance may be a separate issue, but from an expensing perspective, I can't see that it is.

bergamini

Agreed. Although I know of some friends whose companies make them go get rental cars for long trips. That doesn't work for me at all because it's easily an extra hour each way to pick up / drop off / fill up, shuttle, park, paperwork, etc. What a waste of up to 25% of your work day for a vry nominal savings by the employer.

Proudelitist

Personal mileage is not paid to rental cars. So, let's say you rent a car out of pocket for 100 dollars, but drive 200 dollars worth of mileage and claim it. You tell the company you drove your personal car, and get 200 dollars, netting a 100 dollar profit. By deception. Fraud.