I actually usually enjoyed doing the expense reports; it was like putting a puzzle together. 
Ah good, sounds like they chose the right person for it then 
My husband used to work for a company that would pay for any dinner in any restaurant, including alcohol, but they wouldn’t pay for room service. So, after a hard day of work, my sweetie would order room service, but pay for it and get a receipt separate from his room tab, and they’d reimburse him. Why a sandwich or a salad brought to the room was disallowed, but a steak dinner with wine was OK, we never understood.
Being a gov’t employee, I get per diem when I travel, so if I spend less than is allocated, I come out ahead. I traveled with a super-cheapskate once who refused to even consider checking out the local cuisine. He insisted on going to a grocery store and getting ramen. So he ate alone in his room, and I took the rental car and ate real food. And I never traveled with him after that first time.
I’ve never understood this. Per diem is money in your pocket. It’s like your paycheck- you get it no matter what. So why do people all of a sudden want to start living like they’re poor just because they’re on business? If you wouldn’t eat Ramen all day at home, why would you just because you’re getting per diem? It’s like they think that the dollars they hand to the cashier at Burger King are the same dollars they’re getting when they file the expense report.
IT MAKES NO SENSE! AAARRGHH!
1.Per Diem
2. Starve
3.Profit!
Makes sense to me, you get the money regardless, then get frugal and have some extra cash for something else.
Granted, I wouldn’t make myself miserable in the process.
Maybe he did eat ramen all day when he was at home.
The only time I got shafted on an expense report was when I got into a fender bender in my rental car. I had the extra insurance but I had to pay a hundred dollar deductible and they wouldn’t cover that.
I found that very strange because if for some reason I had to work on the weekend, they would tell me to take the wife to a nice restaurant and expense it. So they probably could have.
But you can do that with your regular paycheck, business trip or not. You can do that with your savings account. Per diem dollars are indistinguishible from the dollars that you already have or the dollars you’ll get in your check. If you wouldn’t starve yourself back home, why would you do it on the trip?
These people like to compare “money spent on food” with “extra money for the trip” as if those two figures actually bore any relationship whatsoever. If you took the per diem, deleted its title, and just put it in the paycheck with the rest of the salary/wage, would these people still insist on eating Ramen? No. So why do they let the title ‘per diem’ fool them?
Further, if you don’t use it, they might assume you don’t need it, and you lose it. Better to live it up, you can keep the memories.
Years ago I worked for a company that passed a whole slew of new accounting rules that ended up costing a whole lot more money than it saved. The rules were rolled out to much fanfare, and every employee had to sign a paper stating they had received and understood the rules.
The first odd thing was that there were to be Absolutely No Exceptions to the rules. OK, whatever. My first trip under the new rules, I ran into the first set of bizarre conditions that common sense indicated should have been allowed. We were specifically told that we could only stay in a particular set of hotels unless those hotels were further than 20 miles away from the client site. On my trip to Atlanta, the client site was in one of the outer suburbs, and had a hotel right next door. The client had negotiated a special rate with the hotel (let’s call it $65/night). The hotel even provided free shuttle service to-and-from the airport. However, the hotel was not on the approved list. Therefore, I had to stay at a hotel about 15 miles away, at a cost of $80/night. I also had to rent a car, for something like $45/day, plus gas. So, instead of spending around $150 for lodging, I ended up spending $315 for lodging, car, and gas.
Another travel rule was that the company declared they would not pay for lunch while an employee was traveling unless A) it was a “business lunch”, B) someone from the client site was in attendance, and C) a credit card had to be used. This was based on the logic that everyone ate lunch whether they were traveling or not, and the company didn’t pay for an individual’s lunch when the employee wasn’t traveling. Huh? It was pointed out by many people that not everyone went out to eat lunch when they were at work, but that many of us brought our own lunches from home.
No Exceptions! My boss understood the idiocy of the rule and told me to just grab my counterpart and take him to a restaurant for lunch so that I wouldn’t have to pay for a stupid rule. So, on the first day, rather than just grabbing a sandwich and drink for $5 and working at my desk debugging the software, I said to my counterpart, “Hey, let’s go get a bite to eat and discuss the issues you have been having.” He said, “Great! Hey, Bill … grab Tom, Sue, Jane, Frank, and Marty … we’re going to Red Lobster!” Soooo … $5 against $80, plus, we were out for about an hour and 20 minutes. Great savings there!
There were many, many other situations where the rules flat-out did not make any sense.
Finally, after about 3 months, the company finally relaxed the more onerous rules. However, the rules were relaxed quietly, and without much fanfare.
One manager did not find out that the rules had been relaxed and was still religiously following the old rules because, remember, There Are No Exceptions! He followed them for about 2 years, until he was called on the carpet for consistently spending too much money on trips. In his defense, however, he was able to show that he had followed the old rules to the letter.
Good times, good times.
When I first came home after my accident, I was using a wheelchair. My insurance company wound up renting the thing for almost $2500 (24 months) when it retailed for $325.
Because someone didn’t want to risk buying it outright if it wouldn’t be needed for long. :smack:
Many years ago I went to a 10-day class in Bell, California. The company put me up for two weeks in a decent hotel, but there was no way I wanted to spend the weekend there. I checked out and relocated to a nicer area at a place that was $45/night less. Even though I saved the company $90, they refused to pay for the “unauthorized” hotel.
It sounds like the OP is British, I’ve worked for several American companies, and never once did I have the balls to put dry cleaning on my bill. That said, I can see your point and I’d just bury that expense next time you have a receipt lacking “details”.
I personally can’t imagine what it must be like to work a job where you have to wear a suit and have to travel constantly. I bet there’s an entire thread on tips on how to pack the suits, keep them clean, keep them from getting wrinkled, etc etc.
There was one time a company I worked for asked me to stay overnight over a weekend for a trade show. So, I booked a $200 a night room; and ordered $50+ plates of dinner each night.
My supervisor called me in to question the expenses. My response was as follows: "I’ll make you a deal. Not only will I not stay at nice hotels, and eat at the hotel restaurant and run up 50 dollar plus tabs, I wont travel at all, and like your other salesmen, I’ll come into the office at 8, leave at 5, and put my 40 hours a week in.
"OR, we could keep doing what I’m doing, being your top salesman by working 12-14 hour days plus working from home, being away from my wife on weekends and many nights a week, all of which might mean on occasion, if Im being asked to stay on the road and give up my Friday or Saturday night to the company, I might occasionally be forced to spend a little more on overnight expenses.
My boss smiled, patted me on the shoulder and said, “El Presidente, keep doing what you are doing.” 
How many hours of unpaid overtime did Henry work that year? In the past as a non-exempt employee I’ve worked hundreds. One free day hardly seems excessive.
None, actually. This was a very by-the-book corporate environment—quite a nice place to work as a non-exempt. If one were there and did work, it was on the clock.
… But… Is it all worth it? I mean giving up all that extra time and effort for an average hotel and meal when out on business? I don’t think so
All this goes to show that there are more important things than saving money.
One of them is following the rules because they are the goddam rules, no matter how pointlessly fucked up they may be.
I’m a believer in “follow the rules whether you agree or not; if you disagree, what you have to do is try to get them changed - while still following them”, but there are times when a rule is impossible to follow.
Filing expenses within 30 days of incurring them makes perfect sense.
But when you add to that rule the following:
- hotel stays are considered incurred on the first night, no matter how long the complete stay is,
- expenses can only be filed from your “home office” desk,
- people spending weeks or months traveling,
it adds up to turning compliance into a physical impossibility.
My longest travel period while with that company was 15 weeks; my longest stay at the same location, 8.5 weeks (my family calls that my “psychopath movie trip to Italy” in reference to “9 1/2 weeks”)
I was on a business trip and someone stole my shoes. From inside my room. At a five-star hotel. Which denied fault and would not help in any way (and I’m damned if I’m going to bother with legal action for a £50 pair of shoes). I attended the meeting in flip flops until I could buy a new pair at lunchtime.
The company put me in said ridiculously expensive hotel, eating absurdly expensive dinners, for three nights at its own behest - because when I had tried to book a considerably cheaper one, I was turned down because it wasn’t on the approved supplier list.
Back in the office, out of about 100+ expense items approved for the prior month, the cost of the replacement shoes was struck off by my boss.
Rules like that should be discretionary, but accountants’ brains don’t seem to work that way.
Pakistani.