Hello @jocelynfleur ,
My suggestion would be to go back to your Travel and Expense Policy and align your answers with the policy, if that is a possiblity. This answer is specific to your companies guidelines in that it depends on what expene types you have made availalbe for Meals and how you treat the "actuals." Our company does "actuals" as well and we have two expense types for Meals: Internal (Internal - used for business meals while traveling, working lunches, internal meetings) and External (External - used for business lunches where you are taking out a customer or vendor.) Our allowance is USD 70 for Internal per day while traveling and that has to include gratuity. We don't have an allowance on External because we leave it up to employees disgression depending on customer/vendor ROI and GP Dollars. The way we decided to regulated our employees spend is by giving an allowance of the USD 70 per DAY while on business and you can buy whatever you choose to while traveling as long as you stay under that amount including tips. If they are at the airport and grab gum, water and a bag of cashews that is their choice and they just deduct that amount from their allowance.
From my perspective as an Administrator I would get clear on how you want to train your employees to expense items that are edible but not necessarily a meal. If you previously had a per diem for meals and now they are doing actuals just retrain them to think of anything they buy for " food" as a meal. Again, this comes back to your policy in how you track spend that employees incur while eating/snacking on business trips.
To your specific example: "I was too busy and just grabbed a snack and soda from a vending machine, can I itemize the cost and use "Vending machine" under vendor?
Is the employee submitting this as an out-of-pocket expense as a "meal" and they would like to know in the expense detail field if they can write: Vending machine? If I were you this is how I would respond, "Thank you for your email. Our Travel Policy states that ______________________(whatever backs up the behavior you are encouraging) and you may submit that expense using the appropriate Vendor whom is Canteen Vending Services (or whatever yours is) and this does go towards your daily allowance so just keep that in mind as you choose dinner and lunch today."
Your employees will need to reorganize in maintaining receipts as they adjust to the new demand to provide supporting documentation and relearn submitting claims for food or meals. There will be tons of questions, just stay consistent because they all talk to each other and share information and bring it back to the Policy.
The bottom line comes down to what do you want to "allow" employees to purchase and claim as a "meal."
I hope that helps you find the solution you are looking for to resolve pier diem vs actuals.
~Rosalie
