You’ve got it. Way to cover your bases in the last sentence as well

Another trick I forgot to mention is my compnay will convert foreign transactions only based on a foreign exchange receipt. So I spend time seeking out the worst exchange rate, often at hotels or airports and then use that rate for all my overseas expenses. That avoids me being out of pocket as my credit card exchange rate is not good all the time!

-J

Another way to ensure that everything is covered is through cab receipts. I was taught early in my career to ask cabbies for extra receipts in any city you travel to. That way, if you end up spending out of pocket for something that’s not covered, you can claim it that way.

I would, however, never use such a system for anything but a truly work-related expense.

Our company just switched to an SAP system, and it is so hard to use that it is a well known fact that people will just not submit smaller expenses to save themselves the frustration of having to deal with SAP.

True story!

I have also heard horror stories of sales reps that rarely turned in receipts, their company card was revoked and they incurred personal liability on the late and over the limit fees – it was unnecessary and a little pathetic. The rep still had to entertain clients, and had to pay for everything personally and wait for cash reimbursement. He lost a lot of money. Even if all the receipts were hastily stuffed in an envelope, that would have been a great start. He was often 3-4months behind, the company flags expenses more than 90 days behind. What was even more sad is that the company I used to work for had a pretty good technologically advanced system – all company credit card purchases where automatically fed into the software.
Cash tips (hotel porter, maid, baggage handler) can add up quickly. It’s so important to remember that.

1. You will find those invaluable generic receipts at the bottom of the meal receipt given to you. Usually it’s cardstock paper where the itemized list is printed out and there is a perforated small slip you can tear off (1/4″ by 2″) that says Thank you and has a line for the total amount. Tear these off and these can be used for when you have missing receipts or meals you need to account for. These are invaluable and I normally keep them whenever I encounter them for later use.

2. As earlier stated, know the maximum amount you can claim without a receipt. I often miss meals or pack a personal granola bar / power bar for breakfast or lunch, so you can still get a little money back for this expense.

3. Don’t forget to claim mileage.

4. Sometimes restaurant receipts don’t list the tip you’ve given especially if you give it in cash, you need to annotate the receipt to note the tip given.

5. This is unethical and / or fraudulent but I’ve seen people buy the lowest cost airline ticket and then expense the fully refundable fare based on buying that ticket last minute and then refunding it prior to travel. This would only work with a personal credit card. If you wish to do this, use caution.

6. When you do your expense reports look at it from an auditor perspective and make sure the numbers all add up, have explanations and seem to be fair and reasonable. I’ve had employees that do stupid things like if the maximum amount of reimbursement without a receipt is $20, they will write $20 each meal. Basically they kill the golden goose as the policy gets changed as it’s unreasonable. If they were less greedy and wrote $17.56, $12.34, $19.75 for the same line items they would have been fine.

Similarly I had an employee expense some really dubious items like a shirt, cigarettes, adult movies (as written on a hotel receipt) and cigarettes. That type of stupidity could get you fired.

-Jeff

My DH travels internationally for his job, and his employer pays below the per diem rates listed on the State Department’s web site — sometimes FAR below. The first year we found out about this opportunity, he ended up getting a $3000 deduction on our tax return, solely from the difference between the actual per diem he was paid and the published per diem rates for the cities where he traveled.

I am so there with you!

I work in the evil accounts department that force you to submit correct and legible receipts and all I ask is that you make your handwriting legible and don’t try to claim the outfitting of your house as a ‘business expense’. LOL.

People tend to think, oh it’s only one claim, it doesn’t matter, but we processed over 16,000 claims in this financial year and if everyone has bad handwriting and no receipts imagine how hard it is for my staff and I????

Enough complaining from the other side of the equation!

S

PS, just to give you an idea of how quickly we process though, if you get your paperwork to us, we guarantee to pay you within three working days!

Thankfully, everything is quite casual. I just hand in receipts and note on them what they’re for. The financial secretary then takes it from whatever part of the youth budget it fits and reimburses us. It’s an easy process. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to remember to turn them in when I’m at church. My attention is usually pulled in so many different directions, and turning in receipts isn’t one of them.

His costs are all billed back to the client he was visiting (to audit). He is required to bill the per diem for meals regardless of the actual costs. He is also required to bill the miscellaneous per diem of $17. An average 5 day trip means about $150 “profit” for us.

Everything goes on the company CC, he normally completes his online expense form the last night at the hotel and at home adds any odd expense incurred at airports on the way home. The expense check is issued about a week later and the moment it is deposited I pay off the amount due to the CC, and the excess gets added to the weekly contribution to retirement accounts or extra mortgage payments. It never gets spent, with the exception of the $50 annual fee we pay to have the corporate AMEX card earn airline mileage. That fee is covered by the first $50 of excess reimbursement each year. We earn enough for at least one flight to Europe every year.

His travel has a definite impact on our finances. Not only do we make that $150/wk, but he isn’t consuming groceries at home and his car sits parked all week which probably saves us another $100/wk.

Reimbursements are a reason I have a pretty sizeable emergency fund in savings. 30 days is a minimum for us.

So my solution: save up a bigger buffer in your savings account. You won’t be getting much interest, but you also won’t be losing 19% from your credit card. One nice thing is that you only have to (cut your spending and) save up that money once– it will come back once you get reimbursed.

One issue I still have problems with is the lag time between reimbursement from the company for expenses incurred and the time I need to pay the balance of my credit card. At my company, we book all our travel, and it’s often critical to book flights at least two weeks ahead of time in order to ensure getting a seat and getting a relatively affordable economy fare flight. Add another week for the business trip itself, a quick submission of the expenses, and then usually a 2 week turnaround time for an expense check to be issued, then depositing the check and waiting a day or two for it to clear and have the payment transfer over and well, i’m butting up against or going past that due date pretty quickly. Most cards that offer points have the highest rates of interest so if a balance isn’t paid in full by the payment due date, I incur interest costs of 19%. Due to lack of monitoring on my part, I probably ended up paying out over $1,000 in interest annually for a number of years because of not paying the balance in full on time.
I’ve tried talking to my company about a quicker turnaround time on expenses but have been told that a 30-day turnaround time is usually the standard. Is this true?
My solution, to at least minimize my out-of-pocket interest charges, has been to open up a dedicated line of credit with my bank, at a much lower 3.5% rate, which I pay my credit card out of each month. I then apply expense cheques directly to the loc. Wondering if there’s a better way or if others have experienced this situation?
One happy note: I can expense alcohol, though I would never expense anything more than a glass of wine or beer with dinner.

On the flip side, the person reviewing your expense report probably doesn’t speak German either, so they’re probably not going to try and dispute any of your claims.

I can also expense up to two alcoholic beverages with a business dinner, which is nice, especially in Germany, where all beverages are beer.

Either get a cash advance in the amount well more than the cost of the trip or use a company credit card. I use the former because I rather use my credit card and get the points and use the cash advance to pay the expenses incurred on the trip. If there are any delays in the reimbursement for travel expenses, you have the cash advance to pay for the expenses incurred on your credit card.

As far as keeping track of expenses, I do hold on to all my receipts while on travel for reimbursement purposes and keeping track of my daily spending.

How many of you are allowed a per diem, rather than expensing each invidivual meals?

My company allows per diem with the rate depending on the cost of living in a partiular city. What ever you don’t get to spend, you pocket. Some cities have an über high per diem rate for no reason and you end up banking money while on travel especially if you’re working long days.

I work for a non-profit that is always struggling with state budget cuts and donor revenue drops. Some of my coworkers don’t expense their miles to try to “help.” Sadly, it’s usually the people who can barely afford to pay their rent that do this.

Another friend of mine works for a firm that pays for meals and cabs when they work late into the night. He never expenses anything, thinking it will endear him somehow to the higher-ups. I seriously doubt if they’ve ever noticed that he pays for his own meals and takes the bus home at 3am.

It doesn’t seem like much, but a lot of months my expenses are around 10% on top of my take home pay. On a bad (working late) month, my hub’s expenses can be 25% on top of take home pay. You don’t want to be paying all of that out of pocket!

I’d also suggest taking camera phone pics of anything you might want to remind yourself about later. I click one of the places I went on business to remind myself of the expenses incurred at each place…a little story of my trip so I don’t forget an expense along the way. This is obviously only necessary if you are forgetful (like me) or stingy (like me) or anal (like me), lol.

All receipts and documentation are placed in the outer pocket of my briefcase so it’s all in one place when I get back home.

In my field, it’s essential to have billing information noted on the receipts or on a log that comes with them, so we know if the expense is billable to a client or not.

Regardless of company policy, I try to document my expenses accurately. Guess it comes from having been in my own consulting business. Then, my expense reports were reviewed by my CFO (wife) for completeness and my accountant for IRS rules. None of us wanted to catch that falling knife. The need for accurate information was critical to properly price my bid for the work. Under-estimate the cost is like a pay cut. Over-estimate and you may be not get the work.

IMHO everyone should regard themselves as as the CEO of “You, Ink”. Even if you “have a job”! (A mistaken meme — you don’t “have” anything!) You’re selling your time and expertise. The only difference between you and a consultant is that the consultant has choices that you as an employee do not. And a job is only as secure as the last cleared paycheck.

YMMV

Companies (in Canada) are starting to trend towards not reimbursing alcohol. However, it can depend on whether it is marketing or travelling on the client’s money. I am a consultant and when I travel all my expsense get billed to our client. More and more of those clients are not reimbursing alcohol. Usually what I do is ask for any alcohol to come on a separate recepit.

I also tend to do my expense claims on the day I travel home. We have an electronic claim form so I have everything filled in and all I have to do is fix the recipts to something and then I can lodge it.

I would (like others) recommned putting work expenses on a credit card. I only have one (both personal and work) but as I pay it off every month it hasn’t been an issue yet.

Whether the receipts are in your wallet, envelope, whatever the big thing is just being consistent about keeping the receipts and filing claims. I am just too cheap to be willing to give my company my own money to do work for them.