Travel Policies - what does your company allow?

[coryhaas]

Hi all,

We are getting ready to take a deep dive into our rather old Travel Policy in an effort to bring it up to date and remove some grey areas for our employees. I was wondering what your policies are in these areas?

• Do you allow reimbrsement for Airline clubs? If so, do you have a cap? Say the annual fee is $600, do you only allow up to $450 or is the entire amount allowed? What other requirements need to be met? We only allow our outside Sales teams to do this right now, because they are the most frequent travelers we have.
• For those employees who have home offices - do you allow for land line and internet bills to be expensed - if so for the entire amount or just a portion?
• Utility bills for home offices - do you allow a portion to be expensed, yes or no and if yes what are those requirements or why this is allowed?
• TSA Precheck - yes or no, and what requirements need to be met?
• Baggage fees and cancellation fees - I assume everyone allows for these.
• Annual credit card fees? We currently require all of our employees to use their own personal credit cards for business travel. We allow them to use the miles, or whatever other benefits for both personal & business use. We have a cap of $75 per calendar year to be expensed. What have you seen that would drive this min up to say $95 per year?

We are in the food manufacturing industry, so I'd love to hear from those in simular industries. Also we have roughly 750 employees.

Thank you!

[JessicaL]

Hello,

Outside of your industry, but I thought I'd start the responses...

• Do you allow reimbrsement for Airline clubs? If so, do you have a cap? 
  • No, we do not allow for Ailine Clubs that have a cost at this time.
• For those employees who have home offices - do you allow for land line and internet bills to be expensed - if so for the entire amount or just a portion?
  • Internet/WiFi bills are allowable and the policy states no cap, but the expense has to be pre-approved before it is purchased - so, the plan needs to be reviewed to make sure that it is home office appropriate
• Utility bills for home offices - do you allow a portion to be expensed, yes or no and if yes what are those requirements or why this is allowed?
  • No, we do not allow currently
• TSA Precheck - yes or no, and what requirements need to be met?
  • Yes, we allow for frequent travelers (more than 8 trips in one year)
• Baggage fees and cancellation fees - I assume everyone allows for these.
  • Yes, both are allowable
• Annual credit card fees? We currently require all of our employees to use their own personal credit cards for business travel. We allow them to use the miles, or whatever other benefits for both personal & business use. We have a cap of $75 per calendar year to be expensed. What have you seen that would drive this min up to say $95 per year?
  • We use company credit cards at this time

Best,

[clayw1963]

We don't reimburse airline club fees.

Currently we have no employees that are totally home based, so this isn't really an issue for us.  We do reimburse cell phone fees for certain groups that travel and use them exclusively for business.

Baggage fees, yes, we also reimburse for coach seating upgrades (Southwest early bird, etc.)

We don't reimburse credit card fees.  We have a corporate card program.  And there are many no annual fee card options.

Hope this helps!