Business Meals with Attendees

[RebeccaD]

How are others using the expense type "Business Meals with Employee Attendees"? Are you using this expense type only when employees are on a business trip and one person picks up the meal tab? Or are you also using this when a Manager takes out their entire dept out for a meal and if so, are you mandating that all employees who attended be added to the expense details? What if there are more than 20 employees?

This question comes from our LinkedIn group.

[acastro]

Hi Renee- What is the name of this LinkedIn group?

[MGordon]

We don't have that expense type.  We use Business meals and require that the attendees are listed.  Employees are already loaded and available to select, these all have Employee as the attendee type.  If they add an outside person, they may need to create the new attendee, but must select the attendee type (provider, business guess, client, etc).  So, either way the same expense type is used.

[astewart1]

For Business Guess what information is required in your set up? With GDPR guidelines coming into force in Europe then having the Business Guest email address as an identifier would require permission from the Data Subject eg Business Guest which I am struggling to get my head round how we would implement

[mfelicetti]

Hi @MGordon thank you for your information. But I'm not very clear why the other fields in the employee as an attendee is missing, for example in our system the company and attendee title are blank. Do you know can fix this problem?

Thank you

[KevinD]

@mfelicetti Those fields are blank because they are for non-employees. The Company field wouldn't be populated because the employee is part of your company. These two fields are used to distinguish and provide additional information for people (business guests) outside your organization. The attendee type will show as Employee on the expense report, to set these apart from people outside your organization.

Kevin

[tstagliano]

yes we use this expense type and allow the users to search for active employees so they can be added to the attendee list as well as adding attendees from an outside company

[PamSciarra]

We require this expense type to be used for any meal that has more than one attendee.  This includes meals taken while traveling, entertaining and staff appreciation.  We like it because it captures who else was at the meal, especially if need to start researching any possible abuse.

For meals where there are lots of attendees, the attendee list can be uploaded (although it is tricky.) 

[mmagtiba]

How do you upload list of employees.

Thanks.

[mattieyallaly]

We use several different Meal expense codes. Meal-Clients are for those meals where clients are involved (all attendees must be listed including our own employees). We also have Meals-Groups for when it is only our own employees meeting together. All attendees must also be listed.

[LisaS86]

We allow our employees to use this expense type for both situations and also for when they are meeting with outside business contacts. Our policy states the time, date and location must be disclosed along with the topic of Business discussed and all attendees should be included. For large groups, an Excel attendee import template is available to easily add multiple attendees. If it is a departmental meal, we suggest using the Internal Staff Meeting expense type where they list the managers in attendance and then upload the meeting invite or excel list of attendees as an additional receipt image.

[DWHeppner]

I work for Microsoft and I am notseeing this as one of my options.  What is the Expense Type we need to use for Business Meals with Employee Attendees?

[KevinD]

This is most likely a custom expense type someone created. The default expense type Concur supplies is Business Meal (attendees). So, you probably have this expense type, but not one specifically that says Business Meal with Employee Attendee. You can use the default expense type we give you and just use the Advanced Search option to add fellow employees as attendees. 

[smv]

THEY WERE 45 PEOPLE IN THE GROUP, DO I HAVE TO ALLOCATE ALL NAMES ON THE GROUP.  BESIDE EVERY TIME I USE THE GROUP MEAL WITH 10+ ALWAYS, ALWAYS I GET THE SAME MESSAGE  " I CAN NOT USE THIS IF GROUP IS LESS THAN 10 EVETHOUGH I CLICKED ON 10+"  JUST NEED TO KNOW IF I HAVE TO PUT DOWN ALL OF THE 45 MANES.

SILVANA

[smv]

PAID WITH MY USC TRAVEL CARD

[AshleyB]

Hi @smv

That does sound frustrating and would take a lot of time. There might be a better way. Have you asked your company's admin how they want you to handle this? As you can see from this discussion every company handles these things differently and you need to work with your company's policy. 

[EWinters]

For business meals, we are required to list every person who attended whether they are an employee or not.  This is a Government mandate. In addition, we have to breakdown what is food and what is alcohol, if served.  

I use the Attendee Template which you have available in the tool.  Thank you for this!  It's a lifesaver.  I am processing a report right now with 93 attendees.  I was able to extract the first and last names out of Excel and paste it right into your Attendee template.  It pulls over to Concur perfectly.

[TriciaNeal]

We found the easiest way to add employees for a group or department is to have the attendees sign in as they enter.  That way you have the employee list you can upload without having to type it, etc.