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I remember at a previous job I had to do a fair bit of business travel. The company had their own internal tool for filing expense reports. I would do the typ

by tombert 9mo ago

I remember at a previous job I had to do a fair bit of business travel. The company had their own internal tool for filing expense reports. I would do the typical thing of "take picture of receipt, upload receipt, specify how much it cost, etc.", and for the most part it was seemless and it would be sent to my bank account. One time, I bought a box of Fiber One bars at a CVS Pharmacy and expensed that. I got a phone call from the billing department asking why I would expense something like that and I said something like "because I don't usually eat that healthy during business travel and I suspect you can guess the reason after that". They told me they would get back to me, and then I got an email telling me that they rejected the expense report and I would have to file it again to get the rest of my stuff reimbursed. I can be a pretty petty dude, so I filed it again, completely unchanged, I get another phone call telling me to remove it, and this repeated two more times. Eventually I complained to my manager and he was able to get them to let me expense it and it all worked out. I find it amusing, because the box of Fiber One bars was less than five bucks. I suspect all the time that they wasted of theirs and mine probably cost considerably more than the $5 would have saved from not covering it.

orochimaaru 9mo ago
Didn't you have a specific per day expense budget? I think there is a department of labor guidance for local travel and a department of state guidance for international travel. Usually, if your per day expense is less or equal to the guidance (where I work we do $90/day), no one cares. If you go above, you pay. The per day expense is for food. Alcohol cannot be claimed as an expense unless you are in sales.
- skeeter2020 9mo ago
  Even in your short, simple comment I see 4? 5? (or more?) pieces of administrative policy that need to be policed, and then we need a process to handle these rules - and the edge cases (ex: what if I'm travelling with someone in sales but I'm the senior employee and we take a client out for dinner? only sales can expense alcohol but typically the most senior employee must pay), and the resubmission process, and the approve of exceptions process, and on it goes...
- tombert 9mo ago
  There was a limit but I wasn't allowed to just buy anything I wanted. I think I got up to $100 a day (not counting hotel). I didn't expense alcohol.
skeeter2020 9mo ago
37 signals has a story about this, and the birth of policies & procedures that cost far more than the "crime" they're intended to prevent, because in your case it was $5 in granola bars, but that scenario will repeat itself for the rest of time, and extra resources will likely be dedicated to this "problem area". This seems inevitable as companies grow, and is one of the signals I use that it's close to my time to leave.
Veserv 9mo ago
That is more likely a result of legal requirements. As a general rule any personal benefit you get counts as your income and is taxed accordingly. Expensing is not, instead counting as a business expense. To avoid people just forming a personal company and declaring everything they spend a business expense and thus not taxed there are rules around what can be counted as a business expense. If you instead want to take your salary in the form of Fiber One bars, but pay taxes on that spending in dollars, then your accounting department might have had fewer issues since they would not be mixing legally distinct costs and accidentally committing financial fraud.
- onion2k 9mo ago
  If that was true the OP's manager wouldn't have been able to fix it. If finance rolls over it cannot be a legal issue.
  - jimnotgym 9mo ago
    It actually has more to do with how you would implement the controls. What can and cannot be allowed is complicated and requires someone to read and understand the regulations. That is probably more than you can expect from the person processing the actual returns. Normally a person who can understand the rules deseminates it into much simpler company policy, partly by discarding edge cases and things they don't think will apply to the company, and trains the actual operator on the common cases. This edge case was outside of that persons (or systems) normal parameters for operation, so it for rejected. It is not that Finance rolled over, it is that it got escalated to a person who could understand the rules better, who advised the operator how to apply the rules in this case.
- jjkaczor 9mo ago
  Why is it a personal benefit? If I am onsite for 5-10 days, I am likely going to have 1-2 bars/day - especially if I am working a high-stress engagement where actually leaving the client site would have taken away my ability to execute to the required level of service. At some point, policing what each employee eats and how they spend their maximum "per day/per diem" total allowance becomes a cost-drain. I have been in orgs where some people were frugal and bought essentially groceries, so they could eat in their hotel room - some of that was dietary or health choices and restrictions. Eating restaurant food every single day for 3-meals/day is not a healthy choice (especially years ago when portion sizes were typically far too vast in some countries/regions). Then, in the same group - we had staff who would determine an average size meal - and then ensure that the tips they left would max-out to their daily maximum allowance, to "spread-the-wealth" so-to-speak. Neither was fraudulent - we were allowed a daily max budget (it was not a per diem), we still had to submit receipts - heck, in our region if you wanted to spend your budget entirely on alcohol, there were (at the time) no red flags.
jama211 9mo ago
You’re complaining they didn’t want to expose themselves to legal risk with the IRS over a $5 bar. It didn’t cost them more to deal with this over just letting you expense it because they’re bad at economics. It cost them more to deal with this instead of letting you expense it because you were being a difficult employee who was demanding they bend the rules and expose themselves to risk over a $5 bar.

by tombert 9mo ago

orochimaaru 9mo ago

Didn't you have a specific per day expense budget? I think there is a department of labor guidance for local travel and a department of state guidance for international travel. Usually, if your per day expense is less or equal to the guidance (where I work we do $90/day), no one cares. If you go above, you pay. The per day expense is for food. Alcohol cannot be claimed as an expense unless you are in sales.

skeeter2020 9mo ago
Even in your short, simple comment I see 4? 5? (or more?) pieces of administrative policy that need to be policed, and then we need a process to handle these rules - and the edge cases (ex: what if I'm travelling with someone in sales but I'm the senior employee and we take a client out for dinner? only sales can expense alcohol but typically the most senior employee must pay), and the resubmission process, and the approve of exceptions process, and on it goes...
tombert 9mo ago
There was a limit but I wasn't allowed to just buy anything I wanted. I think I got up to $100 a day (not counting hotel). I didn't expense alcohol.

skeeter2020 9mo ago

37 signals has a story about this, and the birth of policies & procedures that cost far more than the "crime" they're intended to prevent, because in your case it was $5 in granola bars, but that scenario will repeat itself for the rest of time, and extra resources will likely be dedicated to this "problem area". This seems inevitable as companies grow, and is one of the signals I use that it's close to my time to leave.

Veserv 9mo ago

That is more likely a result of legal requirements. As a general rule any personal benefit you get counts as your income and is taxed accordingly. Expensing is not, instead counting as a business expense. To avoid people just forming a personal company and declaring everything they spend a business expense and thus not taxed there are rules around what can be counted as a business expense. If you instead want to take your salary in the form of Fiber One bars, but pay taxes on that spending in dollars, then your accounting department might have had fewer issues since they would not be mixing legally distinct costs and accidentally committing financial fraud.

onion2k 9mo ago
If that was true the OP's manager wouldn't have been able to fix it. If finance rolls over it cannot be a legal issue.
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  It actually has more to do with how you would implement the controls. What can and cannot be allowed is complicated and requires someone to read and understand the regulations. That is probably more than you can expect from the person processing the actual returns. Normally a person who can understand the rules deseminates it into much simpler company policy, partly by discarding edge cases and things they don't think will apply to the company, and trains the actual operator on the common cases. This edge case was outside of that persons (or systems) normal parameters for operation, so it for rejected. It is not that Finance rolled over, it is that it got escalated to a person who could understand the rules better, who advised the operator how to apply the rules in this case.
jjkaczor 9mo ago
Why is it a personal benefit? If I am onsite for 5-10 days, I am likely going to have 1-2 bars/day - especially if I am working a high-stress engagement where actually leaving the client site would have taken away my ability to execute to the required level of service. At some point, policing what each employee eats and how they spend their maximum "per day/per diem" total allowance becomes a cost-drain. I have been in orgs where some people were frugal and bought essentially groceries, so they could eat in their hotel room - some of that was dietary or health choices and restrictions. Eating restaurant food every single day for 3-meals/day is not a healthy choice (especially years ago when portion sizes were typically far too vast in some countries/regions). Then, in the same group - we had staff who would determine an average size meal - and then ensure that the tips they left would max-out to their daily maximum allowance, to "spread-the-wealth" so-to-speak. Neither was fraudulent - we were allowed a daily max budget (it was not a per diem), we still had to submit receipts - heck, in our region if you wanted to spend your budget entirely on alcohol, there were (at the time) no red flags.

jama211 9mo ago

You’re complaining they didn’t want to expose themselves to legal risk with the IRS over a $5 bar. It didn’t cost them more to deal with this over just letting you expense it because they’re bad at economics. It cost them more to deal with this instead of letting you expense it because you were being a difficult employee who was demanding they bend the rules and expose themselves to risk over a $5 bar.