Expenses at work

[tom2019]

Is it your employers duty to tell you what expenses you are entitled to when you travel abroad ?

Apparantly we are allowed to claim £12 a day or breakfast if it isn't included in our hotel room.

Ive been away now for nearly 3 months and im due back in a month, so its quite a bit of money!

[MrAdaam]

I'm sure a structured email to the HR department enquiring about what expenses can be claimed for while away on business and the terms around this would not be a bad thing. Sounds like you're in line for a decent expenses claim!

[anonymous-user]

If it's a big company then they are likely to have a set of guidelines.

Why have you not claimed your expenses before now? You are effectively lending money to the company not claiming for 3 months.

[Eric Mc]

An employer has a duty to explain to staff what expenses they can reclaim from the employer.

Of course, the employee should also have enough cop-on to ask for clarification as well - especially BEFORE he/she starts spending any of his/her own money.

[Countdown]

tom2019 said:

Is it your employers duty to tell you what expenses you are entitled to when you travel abroad ?

Apparantly we are allowed to claim £12 a day or breakfast if it isn't included in our hotel room.

Ive been away now for nearly 3 months and im due back in a month, so its quite a bit of money!

Not a "duty" as such but it's in both your interests for you to be told what ALL corporate policies are.

it should have been covered as part of your induction , either by your line manager or HR.

[KingNothing]

Sounds like a tight fisted company to me, breakfast OR £12 a day, fk me, don't go overboard there! If we get sent away for work, we get a day/overnight rate ontop of everything either paid for on company amex cards, or paid for by us using a cash advance then backed up using reciepts. You should never be out of pocket if you've been sent away from home for work IMO.

[Kudos]

tom2019 said:

Is it your employers duty to tell you what expenses you are entitled to when you travel abroad ?

Apparantly we are allowed to claim £12 a day or breakfast if it isn't included in our hotel room.

Ive been away now for nearly 3 months and im due back in a month, so its quite a bit of money!

Presumably only with receipts and UPTO £12?

[tom2019]

Kudos said:

Presumably only with receipts and UPTO £12?

Yes thats right... Also talking to workmate he said you can claim £10 a day for evey dy your on business after two weeks.

The thing is though i signed a contract with a different department so im not sure if these conditions still apply. Im just going to email my manager and find out..

And the company is not tight... They are paying me a decent daily allowance straight into my bank that is not taxed.

[Matt UK]

If the company has guidelines, ensure you have them and work within them.

If they are not forthcoming, then I would just stick my claim in. They would have a hard time if they decided to query your claim because you were outside of the the guidelines they had failed to share with you...

[jock mcsporran]

We have a per diem rate that you can claim without receipts. It's not 10 quid though, that's a pittance.

[a311]

Inkyfingers said:

Why have you not claimed your expenses before now? You are effectively lending money to the company

This gets on nerves. My company is pretty big, the process used to be that you’d submit receipts and it would take around a week from submission for the money to hit your account. Now it’s all done electronically and everything has to be input manually and receipts scanned and attached.

If you don’t dot every I and cross every T they get rejected. Just before Christmas I was away on business and the total cost came to £800 ish. In total it took about 6+ weeks to get the money, I forget the details but they were arguing over about 54p something to do with the max amount of miles you can claim when using your own car per day. The annoying thing is the process is that it all goes to finance for approval then to who ever controls the budget for that project for final approval before the money goes into your account 9 times out of 10 and in this case it was out of my budget yet still have to jump through hoops…..

For 3 months I’d be asking for a company credit card.

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jock mcsporran said:

We have a per diem rate that you can claim without receipts. It's not 10 quid though, that's a pittance.

Ours is £15 if time away is less than 12 hours, £35 for over 12 hours. That does not include travel & meals, it's just for incidental stuff.