Expense report guidelines
 

I am curious. I travel frequently for my company (+69,000 miles so far in 2004) and find some of our expense report rules to be ridiculous. For example, we are not allowed to expense lunch since if I was in my home office, I would have brought my lunch with me. Fortunately, our manager allows us to just roll that amount into the other meals. Has anyone else experienced something like this?

Also, what kind of per diem do individual companies give you? I am allowed $25 a day, but can go "reasonably" higher with receipts to accompany this.


Thanks for your feedback!

My company allows $35 dollars per day for meals but is really cheap when it comes to airline tickets and hotels,they want us to book the cheapest availible period. :rolleyes: I do refuse to stay at motel 6 and non brand hotels though and fly Southwest.

Quite a bit less restrictive here. $75 per day for meals. Company has negotiated fares with all the major airlines and we're supposed to take the lowest fare offered by any of them. However, we can opt to take a different flight if the flight is 1) a nonstop or 2) +/- $50 difference.

As for hotels, we have a list of maximum room rates for nearly every city in the world... Of course, I don't live in a Motel 6 at home and refuse to stay in one while I'm traveling for work and the maximum room rates are generous enough to allow that.

EDIT: after reading through everyone's replies, I thought I'd add that I don't need receipts for purchases under $75.00.

Oh yeah, forgot about the hotel rates. I usually have to stay under around 100/night but this varies by the city. Its much more in NYC or London. Its not hard to stay under 100/night though since my company has negotiated rates with most hotel chains that is a significant savings over most other rates.

Flights are all in premium classes though and usually INTL F class.

In case you are bored/curious, here is a link to goverment international max per diem rates http://www.state.gov/m/a/als/prdm/2004/31886.htm

I do find it quite odd that your company will buy tremendously expensive plane tickets but then won't feed you lunch, which would probably add up to at most a couple percent of the airfare. I'll put in a bet that the airfare and meal allowance eventually come out of two different sets of pockets.

The company I work for uses these as the basis of its per diem policy.

My company (I'm a consultant) also has the "pay your own darn lunch" policy, which I find ridiculous. We have a set $40/day per diem (slightly higher in NYC and SF) that is supposed to cover breakfast and dinner only, but since we don't have to itemize meals, I generally spread my dollars across the three meals. This is the only set limit; we're just expected to bill "reasonable" expenses for hotel, airfare, etc. back to our clients.

One new change in our expense policies has many of us up in arms: previously, we were able to expense airfare to fly our partners/spouses/etc. out to our client site on the weekend or fly us to another city for the weekend rather than us flying home (assuming air fare was less than what it would have cost for us to travel home). Now the expense for these types of tickets will be taxed as taxable income, thus costing us a not insignificant amount out of pocket to stay at our client site, bill more hours, and reduce some of the wear and tear of weekly cross-country travel.

But hey, at least our per diem just went up from $30 to $40/day.

When I'm home I bring in my own lunch in a cooler. It's difficult to do that when traveling... :(

We use Govt per diem (mostly government contracts), but that's only the limit that the company can charge to the customer. If we occasionally go over the per diem amount we are reimbursed though some overhead or administrative account.

We get reimbursed for actual meals costs but don't have to provide receipts or split out per meal unless any meal is over $25.

My previous employer (a major government contractor) used the standard government per diem. Meals were okay, although I frequently exceeded that amount and gladly paid out of my own pocket. My biggest gripe was that our hotel stays had to fall within gov per diem as well...except that we didn't have access to government rates since we wern't government. Negotiated corporate rates didn't help most of the time although sometimes gov't contractor rates were available. So I'd have to stay at Hampton Inns more times than not. And this was when the gov't per diem included hotel taxes. Thank God they don't do that anymore. When they excluded hotel taxes, that made my life a LOT easier. The plus side was that all airfare tickets were to be booked as refundable, although sometimes I was told to get refundable tickets.

However, the contractor I'm with now is extremely generous. No cap on hotels that I've seen. There is no per diem for meals, and the company will reimburse for reasonable meal expenses. Nice dinners (such as Ruth's Chris) are reimbursed. Then again, I always have a cheap breakfast or lunch. As for flights, we are encouraged to book non-refundable tickets, although if need to, refundable tickets will be issued. International flights are flown in Business. Too bad my department has no international travel. However, we are flown back on weekends if we request it. Not too shabby...

IME, most major hotels will extend Government rates to contractor employees traveling on Government business.

We get a wallet-sized card which contains a small copy of a letter on Government letterhead from some-or-other procurement official identifying the traveler as a Government contractor and requesting the hotel extend the Government lodging rate to us. Within the last few weeks I've gotten Government rates at a Hyatt Regency, Westin, Hilton, and one or two upscale independent hotels. Usually it only requires flashing my employee ID (it's obviously not a Government ID) and saying "I'm a Government contractor" when they ask about Government ID.

Interstingly, typically it's a Hampton Inn that has trouble extending the rate to us.

My company has a thick book discussing in great detail what is allowed for restaurants, food, gas, and other expenses-- but then they toss it all away by saying that if you save money in one department you'll be allowed more flexibility in others. That changes it from a Dilbertian exercise into a rather nice policy; by staying with friends during a conference I can book a more expensive ticket that allows a stopover for instance.

I expense lunch even though I'm not supposed to. I spend around $10 a day on meals (yes, all three of them), which is probably why no one complains.

We have the no reimbursement for lunch policy as well. I find it stupid. However if you take a client to lunch then we can expense it. My client love me -- I am always offering to take them to lunch. :D

We don't have caps for Breakfast and Dinner. Just reasonable. I did however have to provide additional documentation when I turned a receipt for one dinner costing $125. They did pay it though.

We don't need receipts for anything under $25. Amazing how many nights I have $24 dinner.

We have corporate negotiated hotel rates which are really good. Nothing 5* but certainly nice hotels (Westin, Hilton, Marriott). We don't have to stay at budget hotels (Hampton Inn, Courtyard, Fairfield)

All airfare is booked through corp travel agency. Policy is to take the lowest non-stop fare. We have negotiated airline discounts with AA, CO, & DL. Anything over 1,200 miles may be booked in biz class.

I was going to ask what cut-off levels others were at. My previous client needed receipts for all expenses. I had to even get receipts for $0.50 tolls. Currently I can get away with a reasonable dollar without providing proof. A friend of mine has to ask for receipts at Subway and other fast food places that sometimes don't even provide receipts. He also only gets reimbursed if he provides itemized meal receipts. They won't take the ones that just show a subtotal with a line for a tip and the new total. They want to see exactly what he ate and drank.

What about tips? Are they out of your own pocket or do you get those back too? The tips I leave for housekeeping come out of my own pocket.