Your travel and expense payments should be considered as the Company’s investment in your efforts whether for Sales, Research, Training, or Meetings purposes. Therefore, please respect the process as you would any other investment decision.
The following is our Company’s Travel and Expense Policy and Procedure until further notice:
1. Travel.
The Company will pay for travel as long as expenses are reasonable. Employees are expected to fly coach and arrange for e-tickets, where possible, through recognized Internet providers such as AOL travel to get the best prices and arrangements. Employees should make similar arrangements for hotels and car rentals as required.
2. Travel Advances.
Except in hardship cases, the Company provides no travel advances.
3. Mileage.
Any use of an employee’s own vehicle for company business over 5 miles per incident will be paid at the then prevailing mileage rate approved by the Internal Revenue Service.
- Supplies and Services.
Supplies and services used in your work will be reimbursable if approved in advance by your supervisor. Your supervisor may approve the continued reimbursement of certain of these supplies without every time approval (e.g., art supplies for a graphics designer; copies of presentations for a sales person). We strongly encourage employees to seek out approval for any supplies or services they believe will enhance their work product or those of others around them.
- Entertainment and Meals.
Entertainment and meals is always a tricky issue in expense reports. This is reflected by careful review of this category by the Internal Revenue Service. All meals out of town are reimbursable, as long as reasonable prudence is used. Entertainment of customers is encouraged but within reasonable and prudent limits (i.e., no painting the town red or excessive use of alcohol, and so on and so on).
6. Expense Report Submissions
Expense reports should be filled out promptly and submitted for reimbursement. Receipts and explanations should be included with all expense reports. Expense reports are to be signed by the employee and their manager and forwarded to Accounting. Any Expense Report turned in 45 days after the first expenditure on the report is subject to nonpayment.
7. Reimbursement.
Employees will be reimbursed for reasonable expenses incurred during the course of their duties, upon the submission and approval of the expense reports, explanations, receipts, and vouchers in accordance with this policy. The Company will consider and approve, in its sole discretion, the reasonableness of expenses, and the amount that shall be repaid.
We encourage all employees to bring up any questions they may have about these policies and procedures.
____________________________ Dated:
Authorized Employee of Company
Travel and Expense Policy and Procedure
Review List
This review list is provided to inform you about this document in question and assist you in its preparation. Travel and Expense policies are tricky subjects and full of mystique and lore, most of it bad. Therefore, announce your policy and check to see if it makes sense and seems reasonable. If so, publish and distribute the policy.
The President or CEO should sign the policy, in our judgment, to show it is a valued issue by top management. We believe you should reinforce this is an “investment” made in employees. A Sales call to a prospective customer is as much as an investment as buying a new piece of equipment. In fact, it may have a much higher rate of return and more promptly.
Employees who travel do so after hours and at substantial inconvenience to themselves and their families, as a rule. To the extent they get to fancy places such as Paris or London, at least in my case, it is usually Paris, Kentucky or London, Ontario! Your policy should reflect that respect for those worthwhile activities.
On the other hand, your policy should also frown on boondoggles and similarly unproductive trips to Florida in February, elaborate conferences, and the like. If you don’t do this, your people will lose respect for your enterprise and its mission.
- New employees should be given a copy of this policy on their first day of work.
2. All employees should be encouraged to buy supplies and services appropriate for their work and development. A few employees abuse this policy. But, the vast majority doesn’t use it enough. You want to be sure your key functional people get the computer upgrades they need to do a better job, for example. You want your sales people to buy sales oriented books for reading on their travels or at home, for another example. As our sales people say to customers, every company would love to reimburse their employees for buying our Sales Skills and Negotiations Handbook discs. At the same time, those same companies would not like to see our Three Stooges or Puzzles discs show up on the same expense account. In other words, this discretionary area requires management judgment to get the best out of it while discouraging bad practices.
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