seems like not itemizing makes a lot more sense than itemizing and lying

Yup. I can imagine "Clown services" being the charge category for a vendor one hires to provide attention-grabbing entertainment at one's trade show booth. Or the vendor one hires to entertain employees' families at a company party.

I guess all things expense-related didn't get any less exciting in the ten years since this thread was first opened!

Maybe clown services was a polite way of referring to consultants?

I've been retired for a while, but spent a lot of time travelling around the UK (and occasionally elsewhere) when Inwas at work.

When I started - expense policy was a per diem for 24 hours or over - you got a set allowance and it was up to you if you stayed in a cheap B&B and ate at Mc Donald's and pocketed the difference, or if you blew the budget on the posh hotel and paid for your meals out of your own pocket.

We also had smaller amounts if you were out for long or short days - a few pounds to buy a sandwich and a drink for short trips, enough for a reasonably priced meal if longer - no receipts required.

Then we went over to "actuals" with the nause of providing receipts for everything spent - and had to use a company provided hotel booking service........

Expenses soared - as folk no longer had the incentive to penny pinch, and the hotel booking service came up with prices well in excess of what people could get booking themselves (as an example, we were allowed to use it for leisure trips to save money...... I did it once thinking I'd saved myself a fortune - until I checked in and heard another customer being told that the just turn up rate was about 2/3 of what my "discounted rate rate" was..... Never again!)

Add in to that the requirement to collect all the receipts but you didn't have to submit them but just keep them in your desk in case you were required to produce them at a later date.gup to 5 years).. On clearing out my desk on my retirement, I found a large folder of unwanted never asked for receipts, which I took great pleasure in chucking in the bin.

I know I was never as willing to travel after the rules changed as most of my trips were from London to Bristol, and my subsistence was a can of Coke and a sandwich from the station newsagent whilst rushing to catch my train home.... The grief from the newsagent when asked for a receipt was unbelievable - but in the end with being asked dozens of times a day - he got into the habit of just handing you a blank receipt stamped with his details when asked - leaving us to put in the amount we wanted....

So what do us consultants get to deduct?

I used to work for one of the big consultancies and we were explicitly told *not* to include itemized meal receipts, only the total.

When I worked in government our expense reports were accessible to the public under Freedom of Information laws. Lazy journalists frequently filed requests to play "gotcha" journalism.

So we NEVER submitted an itemized receipt. We were also vague about putting names on hospitality claims.

Oh wow great job bumping a 10 year old thread

Not sure if it falls under fraud. My company re-imburses "reasonable cost of meals" - which has a $$ limit per day. On weekdays I'm normally busy and come in way under the limit so on weekends I'll 'compensate' with meals that are 2x, 3x the daily limit. Haven't had any problems thus far.

Holy Necroposting, Batman!

My last trip to Vegas I knew I'd have a room with a kitchenette, so I brought a bunch of my own diet food. (It travels well.) I actually got questions about why I didn't have any meal charges. Next time, I'll make up fake cheap meals...

I knew a lady at my old job who would expense "cash tips" to the bellman, valet etc that couldn't be traced. Of course she never actually tipped the people either. She was so important to customer retention that the only complaints were that she kept coding them to billable projects.

$50-$100 an ER too, not just a couple of bucks.

1. Automatically fill in an exchange rate that the employee cannot obtain on the open market. Force employee to manually enter exchange rates for every transaction to avoid losing money.

2. Deny hotel nights or car rental expenses due to "lost" receipt. Don't tell employee and assume they won't check reimbursement checks. Many do not.

3. Modify expense rules to deny claims to the point that line managers complain.

These are the frauds I have seen.

I would leave the morning of, let the usual travel snafus make me late to miss whatever they wanted me there for, say "Sorry, company policy", and repeat until fixed if you asked me....

Or, even more annoyingly, use the bank rate, and make it impossible to change. The employee then has to calculate the exchange rate losses for each mode (cash, individual CC types) and enter those as line items, with evidence attached.

Yes, force consultants who could be charged out at a couple thousand a day to spend half an hour plus of their time calculating a couple of pounds worth of exchange rate losses and supplying half-blanked statements to back it up.

I worked in the Government too and one of the things we were told to ask ourselves was if our reports or anything to do with work came in to view of the general masses would they stand up to public scrutiny. Ask yourself that before doing or writing something.