What is the best way to reimburse less than per diem?

[scottcb2]

In our organization, there are some departments are wanting to reimburse less than the calculated per diem amount. What is the best way to accomplish this?

I was able to get a field added and set an audit rule to stop that field from being more than the calculated amount, but I can't get that to over-ride the calculated amount. Has anyone else ever done this or have any idea as to the best way to do this?

I am not thinking it is possible with Concur but thought you guys would have some sort of creative idea.

[KevinD]

@scottcb2 I'm thinking this is not possible since Per Diem is calculated by the system. I just tested it and the Daily Allowance amount field is grayed out. 

I'm curious, why are departments wanting to pay less than what the daily per diem is and why is your company allowing some employees to get the full per diem and others not? 

[Munari_alEXPert]

Dear Scottcb2,

Is it a diem established by the Company (e.g 100 dollars a day for meals) or is it reffered to travel allowance which are set differently by each Country's tax autorities and then uploaded into Concur?

If established by the company, apart having the policy changed for the specific departments, I guess you would need to copy the rules as you have already and modify while transfering it to a different group under a new policy within Concur. Under the new policy group it will be be then calculating as you new set up  e.g. 90 instead of 100.

If instead you are referring to travel allowance, those are a tax free benefits for employees, so I absolutely wouldn't try to pay less, as the company could be face legal charges if one day employees will sue the company. 

[belindaz]

This is going to depend on the reasoning behind this choice.

1. The department has their own per diem policy, and it is not driven by regulatory requirements.  In this case it is possible to have a different travel allowance configuration with different rates for each department.  This would be a new travel allowance setup, so there is some effort involved to do this initially and to maintain the rates independently for each configuration.    (And as noted by others, you do want to first verify that there are no regulatory requirements that might cause taxation issues with this choice.)
2. If the department is just trying to reduce costs, but does have to follow regulatory requirements, you might consider exploring actual expenses compared to limits. In this travel allowance configuration, the system can compare the sum of actual expenses against the regulatory limit for those expenses.  You can elect to reimburse only up to the regulatory limit - so if your user has a limit of 100/day for meals and he only spends 90, he would only be reimbursed 90.  If he spends 120, the reimbursement is capped at 100.  This too should be reviewed by your compliance/tax department, but it is less likely to go against the regulatory needs.