Business class is the lowest class available on the Acela.

Yup - it has no extras. There is a first class car on Acela, which can usually be gotten with a mileage upgrade, and is quite nice - better than US airlines domestic first class, in fact.

in my case, it depends on the mood of approver. most of the time I got leeway in terms of exceeded expense, as long as receipt available. I've worked for my employer for fairly long time though (it's small firm).

I've been scolded once by finance in my earlier time but that's about it. now the airtickets directly is not our own responsibility, it's easier on the expense reporting. but the booking process, unsurprisingly become much more tedious.

One of the joy of being Canadian. The tax free per diem annual bonus, paid in USD ;)
It is even a better benefit as most of my gigs are in Asia and I can eat at local hole-in-the-wall places who has never heard of receipts. Best of all they have adjusted per diem based on the cost of expat living at major Asian cities.

My issue was laundry for one client who sent me to S Korea for a 10 week gig with a 2 week paid break (vacation) in the middle. I found out how much it cost to wash socks and undergarments so I ask if I can just buy new items at a lower cost. It was approved by my immediate supervisor but declined at corporate. They had to do some creative accounting to straighten that out.
This was not a per diem gig so it was breakfast and dinner at the Hyatt and lunch at the corporate cafeterias.

I once took a short trip, think it was a 2 night hotel stay, a rental car receipt, one business meal and per-diem for the rest. Brain dead simple expense report to file, but I just handed the small stack of receipts to the administrative assistant to file for me. Somehow she caught that the hotel had charged me $1.50 per night for the in-room safe. I didn't request the safe, nor use the safe, it was just a generic safe that was in the hotel room. The admin ended up filing my expense report but charged the $1.50 per night fee for the safe against the $5 incidentals portion of the per-diem. Wasn't worth my time to argue about it, so I just ate the $3.

I work for a large fortune 500 company. We have a pretty straight forward policy and I haven't encountered much scrutiny. All of our trips are supposed to be booked with concur. When we are driving if the distance is more then 120 miles in a day we are supposed to rent a car instead of driving our own car. Recently they instituted a 60 dollar limit per day for food, before that we had no stated policy. In my case I actually find myself spending more money then I did before because now I know what the acceptable limit is. All of my expenses are put on a company credit card so I am not required to include receipts for anything other then hotel stays.

I used to think no one really looked at my expenses because they all got approved pretty quickly. Then I had a line item removed for a German receipt for paracetamol (the massive headache was preventing me from working on site) and that alone got rejected because "the company doesn't pay medical expenses". I expensed a EUR 65 meal for myself the night before but they wouldn't pay EUR 4.50 for painkillers!

I guess what this tells me is that I never expensed enough to raise eyebrows, even though people were watching.

We actually had an unwritten rule that, if you were happy to pin your expense report on the company notice board without being embarrassed about it then it was probably fine.

Here's a recent expense report musing:

Say that once in a while you want to treat yourself to a nice meal and it goes over the expense limit for meals. Do you expense up to the limit? Say you eat a $75 steak dinner but your meal cap is $50. Do you expense $50? Or do you just pay for the whole meal itself?

Why would you not expense the maximum allowed?

Without knowing the details of the company's expense arrangement, and without knowing how you interact with whoever is approving your expenses, I'm gonna say just go ahead and expense the whole amount. What's the worst that could happen??

Quote:

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How much scrutiny do your expense reports go through?

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Let's hope not a lot.

How I'd play it depends on the policies of the company and my history/relationship with those approving the expenses. A few examples from personal experience:

• At one company the limits were adhered to strictly, and when a meal expense exceeded those limits, the powers-that-be did worse than simply reduce the reimbursement to the max allowed. Having seen one of my colleagues go through the wringer on that I minded my meal costs carefully. When I had a nice dinner with a few drinks that exceeded the limit, I had the restaurant put the drinks on a second tab and submitted only the first to my employer.

• At the same company years later, after changes both in senior leadership and back office functionaries, enforcement of the policies loosened up a bit. Because I was fastidious with my expenses and expense reports in general while also being one of the busiest travelers I was granted verbal permission to exceed the meals limit once or twice per trip/week provided my daily average was below the limit.

• At another company we had per-meal allowances that did not require receipts. Effectively it was a per diem, though it was paid upon filing rather than in advance. I could have filed for individual meals that went over the allowance instead of just claiming the standard amount, but then I would have had to document it with receipts and possibly face questioning about my decisions. I decided it was best to eat and drink as I pleased, file for the standard amounts, and pocket or pay the difference out of pocket without ever worrying about it.

I never worried about scrutiny of my expenses with any company I worked with. My approach was simple. As a salesperson, sell more than any other salesperson by far and defy anyone to question your expenses. ie. 'My sales last year were $10 million and this year I expect to do $13 million. What is it you want to know about the $300 bottle of wine I expensed on a dinner with a client? I closed a 1.3 million sale at that dinner.'

I really think you have to separate the expenses of those who work in sales vs. the expenses of those who work in any other department of a company. If you are in sales and don't know how to get anything you want put through expenses, you are in the wrong job. If you are in some other department, you are in the wrong department. LOL You also have to separate 'small ticket' from 'big ticket' sales.

As a National Sales Manager, I told my salespeople the rules were simple. I don't care if all you do at 'work' is play golf 3 days a week and eat caviar with every meal. All I care about is the numbers you do in sales. If you do the numbers, you can do anything else you want as long as it is not illegal or immoral. I don't care if you bring me an expense report that includes a weekend at the Four Seasons with your wife, as long as you also bring me a signed contract for a million plus.

Some people think too small and other aren't even capable of thinking bigger. When you are being 'nickel and dimed' over expenses, it is because you are working with nickels and dimes.