Reimbursing employees overseas

[gdelaflor]

Hi!

We have a few employees (mostly executives) working out of Europe and Africa, who from time to time need to be reimbursed for expenses or need to pay back for personal expenses charged to credit cards (normally in currencies different than CAD or USD).

Does anyone have any solution for transferring the funds in an efficient and inexpensive way?

Thanks!

[Munari_alEXPert]

dear @gdelaflor 

I am not sure if I understand the problem. maybe could you please clarify answering a few question?

- Do those employees have a company credit card? If so, I don't see the problem as the company credit card is linked to only one currency for reimbursement. So if they expense EUR it will be exchange the charge in USD, if the card is in USD.

- Don't they have a company credit card and need to pay cash from time to time within those oversea countries?

They should be able to cash some money with their credit card OR ATM card in the country where they go, keeping the receipt of the exchange rate and charges, creating expenses within the local currency in Concur, which anyway will translate into their reimbursement currency in the system, and if they have a lost in Forex, adding an extra line on the expense report for the extra cost bear by them.

- They have a company credit card and buying gift for personal reason to bring back home? 

Depends on your company policy, but the personal charges should be if there are matter of real urgencies, so they should use their personal credit card for those costs. If the company in case allows personal charges, the card still linked to the specific currency (e.g. USD) so if they have personal charges in Euros, the charges will still show in USD on their statement, which will represent the part to be reimburse. 

I thought only a few possible scenarios, if none of those are the one you are referring to, please clarify. thank you

[gdelaflor]

Hi Alessandro.

Let me explain a bit further:

First and foremost, these employees are under the Canadian Credit card program, but sit in Europe and South Africa, so their domestic currency is either GBP or ZAR and their cards are in CAD

There are situations where they use the company card by mistake (most of these happen when they have both their personal and company card in their Uber app and they book a trip on the wrong card. In some cases they can change the payment method in the Uber app itself, but in some others they only realize when they are about to submit the expense report and it is too late by then), so they need to reimburse the company for this expense. The reimbursement currency is CAD (same as the credit card's), so technically they would need to pay back CAD to the company.

The opposite situation can also happen, when their company card gets rejected at a POS and they have to use their personal card. In such cases, the company will reimburse them, but the payment will get issued in CAD, when their card charges are probably in GBP or ZAR. Taking the cash from a local ATM is an alternative, but considering these are Executives, we were looking for a more convenient option (considering that some of these expenses may exceed ATMs' daily limits as it happens normally at hotels).

Hope that clarifies

Thanks again

Gustavo