In fact, our new policy says $35 per day. We will allow more under the appropriate circumstances (taking out a customer, traveling to an expensive city -- such as Los Angeles, etc.) but it must be preapproved. Needless to say, Cincinnati would qualify for the $35 per day.

My point is that it's people like this and others who abuse a companies finances and break the company trust that cause these rules to be made and enforced. Everyone up to that point had been reasonable; hence no strict travel policy. You can't on one hand do things to cause the company to rein you in, then complain when they do.

Not saying all scrutiny is warranted though.... I was once one of those 2nd year dweebes and didn't know better (I was at a different company at the time). I used to give our Chicago salesman a hard time for not getting receipts at the toll booth. You learn with experience.

I'm amazed that no one has mentioned taxi receipts. In 90% of the cases you ask for a receipt and the taxi driver hands you a blank receipt. You put what ever you want in the amount field. Luckily the company I work for doesn't have an official travel policy and I've never had an expense turned down so there is no reason for me to pad the taxi receipt. I also value the trust and integrity that I have earned with the company over the years so I would never do anything to tarnish that.

However, I have a colleague at the office who hates filling out expense reports for smaller cash items like coffee, parking meters, road tolls, fast food lunches, etc. He just divides the total cash amount that he spent during the trip by the number of taxi receipts that has and writes down that amount on each receipt. My company has never had a problem with it and it makes his expense reports much shorter.

After reading some of some of the restrictive travel policies of some companies I am grateful to be working for the company I do. ;)

SOME of them (but trust me, not all) actually do make sense.

We have a lot of individual client contracts that require certain receipt detail levels to get reimbursed. Hospitals, for whatever reason, don't want to allow expense per diems in their contracts. We also work with a lot of faith-based organizations and for many, alcohol is a no-no... so if THEIR reimbursement policy doesn't allow it, ours doesn't either. Our accounting department apparently decided a long time ago that with 700 people (plus 10,000 subcontacters) submitting expenses, that they didn't want to have to always be dealing with the client exception so they made the exception the rule.

I think to them, the cost of verifying the expenses outweighs the cost of collecting the expenses when clients don't end up paying for them.

As far as taxi receipts go, a "common" audit/accounting practice is to check going taxi rates in the area. If the hotel website says the average taxi from airport to hotel is $10 and you turn in for $30, you may have an issue on your hands.

The only issue I ever had was that one time I flew to my destination three days early, left for a mileage run and then came back (it just turns out that my business destination happened to be the right place from which to depart for the mileage run).

I submitted an expense report with the business air fare arriving the same day I checked into my hotel, which was three days after the actual plane arrived. I figured that would make more sense than submitting a report that implies I flew to my destination and then slept on the street for the three days.

Well, they didn't like that and wanted me to submit a new expense report with the right dates. I did and was waiting for my boss to ask me why I didn't stay in a hotel for three days, but he never asked. Oh well! :)


Oh, and one time I bought a First Class ticket on a connecting itinerary because it was the same price as coach on the non-stop. Neither accounting nor my boss asked any questions. It's probably because this wasn't your traditional $2,000 First Class fare but one of those discount fares that is about the same as a typical business fare.

I don't knowingly defraud my company but I am sometimes not the best at keeping up with dinner receipts, taxi receipts, etc. When I fill out my time report a few weeks later I sometimes have to take creative license when filling out the expense report because I really don't remember how much dinner was if I ate really inexpensively one night (for example, a salad and iced tea at Applebee's where I paid cash). I will put in all the amounts I know and then just make up the rest. We are reimbursed for breakfast and dinner. Most times I am running too late for breakfast so I consider breakfast to be the first meal of the day so that usually means I charge in my lunch. This is definitly gray in my book.

Thankfully my company is not nit picky on dinner expenses. We have to turn in receipts for any expense item over $25 but we can charge in alcohol with no problem. On an average week I will usually have two dinners that are over $75. Not once have I ever been questioned.

As far as "matress runs" while working out of town, no one cares if I do this as long as I show up on the client site on time each day. For almost 2 months last year I was changing hotels every night so I could get my Hilton Diamond status back. The difference between the cost of the two hotels I was flipping between was less than $20 difference a night. I charged in the full amount since both hotels were company approved hotels. My coworkers thought it was funny but it wasn't a problem with the "expense nazi's" :D

We thankfully have a miscellaneous line on our expense report. I usually add about $5 a day for little things as tips for the maid, doorman, coffee on the way to work. These don't even hit the radar screen and no I don't keep a detailed list of miscellaneous items, I just make up a small reasonable per day number.

I would think you can just say for those 3 days you were staying w/ friends, or just sightseeing / vacation on your own expense. Don't really need to tinkle with the flight arrival dates.

I have heard a story from a pal, who has a workmate, that will only travel under an assumed name. Apparently, he alters his BP, and I guess has some "fake" credentials. So often George Washington or Alex Hamilton is on his BP . . . its weird . . . he give no reason other than not wanting any paper trail. . . bizarre. I am going to try an learn more.

I was using CabCharge once and the driver said "If you write down an extra $20, I'll give you $10 Cash", inciting me to commit fraud. I didn't, of course, but that's an interesting trick that I'm sure the taxi driver plays once or twice a day.

If he could get 1 person a day to make his vouchers worth $10 extra, he'd be laughing.

So did it never occur to anyone at this small company to talk to this individual and tell him to be reasonable in the future instead of imposing rules on EVERYONE ELSE because of one bad egg?

This approach -- pass a law when one person finds a loophole -- is what government has to do. I don't think business is required to take the same approach. If something happens only rarely, deal with the exceptions, don't punish everyone else.

Years ago, I had a few "coupon booklet"-type tickets that were seriously discounted such that an individual roundtrip exceeded the cost of three roundtrips or something like that. When I submitted the tickets' expenses after all the trips were used for work, it got flagged since the ticket expense was being submitted nearly a year after the expense was incurred and nearly the same amount of time since the first flight was taken. (I submitted it the morning after the last "coupon" was used.) Apparently accounting doesn't like it when costs are assignable to previous quarters and to different projects (even where the applicable projects requiring such trips were not assignable to external clients). :D (And he knew I saved beaucoup money since others on the same trip had paid more for airfare than me on those very flights.)

Do not try that on an international flight returning back to the US, even for US citizens. There has been a recent update in what DHS uses at immigration and their data crunching from flight records is working "better" -- sort of -- but will cause more grief to more Americans as false alarms will increase. And that's where your pal's workmate may land himself in more serious trouble.

In any event, "altering a boarding pass" does not change the name that shows up on the flight manifests and remains in the PNRs. And that data is being backtracked to credit cards and bank accounts currently. In other words, the paranoia won't save him.

Yeah, they can get picky about anything they don't understand.

Yeah, my father got in trouble over an expense report that way eons ago. His boss went to the same conference and submitted an expense report 4x as big. I don't know the end disposition of it, though.

Yeah--delayed submission has caused my biggest hassles with accounting. You would think the free loan of the money would be worth it to them but they don't feel so.

I worked for a consulting firm with a "no-receipt, no-reimbursement" policy (which essentially meant no cash tips to hotel maids, curbside baggage guys, etc. were reimbursed). It was a royal pain. Once I didn't submit receipts for highway tolls and my boss and one of the beancounters called me and asked why! I think they did reimburse me but after that I made sure I had receipts for everything- even the 35 cent tolls on the friggin' Garden State Parkway.

A waste of good billable time and it always made me feel the company didn't trust me.