Do You Have a Company Travel Budget Policy?

[Simo]

I worked with a guy who broke every rule of our travel policy but he got the sales only because he had the big national corporate deal which was done by the manufacture and all he did was just keep contact with the sites and all was good.

The TO was huge profit margin was low but the maintenance work/on going work on the machines was huge. Every 2 to 3 years there would be a full swap out and it would be app $2 million worth of sales every year with updates to one client.

He was the only guy that would check in to the Hotel at 2pm and go for an afternoon nap and check out at 10am the next day.

Drink heaps and eat like a king at the hotel and then say it was a meeting with a client.

I stayed at the the same hotel on one trip and said that he had a conference call in the afternoon so that is why he checked in early. So he would not get caught out he would go and pay for the hotel room the night before so when they saw the transaction on the CC slip it would be done the night before so no one actually knew what time he left the hotel. When I heard the excuse once was he said had an early morning site visit so that is why he paid the night before.

 

[The Rok]

I worked with a guy who broke every rule of our travel policy but he got the sales only because he had the big national corporate deal which was done by the manufacture and all he did was just keep contact with the sites and all was good.

The TO was huge profit margin was low but the maintenance work/on going work on the machines was huge. Every 2 to 3 years there would be a full swap out and it would be app $2 million worth of sales every year with updates to one client.

He was the only guy that would check in to the Hotel at 2pm and go for an afternoon nap and check out at 10am the next day.

Drink heaps and eat like a king at the hotel and then say it was a meeting with a client.

I stayed at the the same hotel on one trip and said that he had a conference call in the afternoon so that is why he checked in early. So he would not get caught out he would go and pay for the hotel room the night before so when they saw the transaction on the CC slip it would be done the night before so no one actually knew what time he left the hotel. When I heard the excuse once was he said had an early morning site visit so that is why he paid the night before.

That's just dedicated laziness....

 

[Hvr]

Lots of valid points in your responses.

I have been doing my job for many years and have also followed numerous threads here relating to your business travels. There is virtually nothing financially in the business that I work for, that I would not know about (unless the boss is taking kickbacks in cash on the o/s trips that he does - and we have even discussed this - "it's his money Ralph" - hey, lets go halves, lol). I guess I'm trying to be prudent in my posts. I think I have a good understanding of the travelling businessperson, and that there needs to be some compensation (or definitely no disadvantage) to being employed in that capacity.

Lets say, hypothetically, that this employee states that he has a degree from the highest ranking university in the state. It's on his Linked In profile, but he doesn't include it on his CV. He tells all his workmates he has the degree, but there is a facility by which you can check these things and, nada, doesn't exist!

No new business has been obtained in the seven months he has worked at our company. In fact, he hasn't logged on to the software running the sales in those 7 months.

He uses figures that others have produced to create reports, putting them together in excel spreadsheets that he manually adds up. Obviously, he doesn't know how to use autosum let alone create formulas.

He runs his own side business, importing an accessory product that would be considered complimentary to our products, and clearly focuses his resources in this area, but the product group is not one that is profitable for our Company at this time. He also sponsors businesses with Company funds in this product group, but no sales have been registered with these "customers", but his own business products are featured on these business' websites. There is a drilldown function in the Mailguard system that lets you see who emails are being sent to and received from and being conservative, at least 60% relate to his personal business.

He uses our warehouse & logistics resources to send his own stock at our cost.

He purchases items for the Company and has the tax invoices made out in his own name (one example, 2 iPads for the reps).

The list goes on......

No lectures please. I know.

Sheesh, this post has taken me ages.

One word: FRAUDSTER!!!

So many fraud indicators that it's not funny. Hopefully he wont bring the company down or cost you too much business when caught. Still the job market is easy at the moment and you'll get something else when the company goes broke. Hopefully.

 

[Simo]

That's just dedicated laziness....

Yep,

The only guy I know that can get budget even when on long service leave for 3 months.

Most of his clients where national corp clients who had full corp pricing structures so not a lot of actually sales work involved just a bit of PR. All the hard work was done at Head office levels most of his clients where Top 100 companies in Aust.

He would do volume sales to make money but the other guy in his dept would do less sales and make more profit per sale.

 

[Simo]

One word: FRAUDSTER!!!

So many fraud indicators that it's not funny. Hopefully he wont bring the company down or cost you too much business when caught. Still the job market is easy at the moment and you'll get something else when the company goes broke. Hopefully.

I agree, I would confront your boss and tell him what you have found out.

IMHO but don't do it like a witch hunt.

 

[The Rok]

I think something you need to consider is, if it is YOUR responsibility to manage & control staff travel expenses, and this guy does something outrageous and gets caught, what are the Board of Directors going to say and who are they going to blame? Will they say robd this is YOUR responsibility, why didn't you pick this up? Unless you can show a paper trail where you brought it to the attention of the MD and he refused to act then you may well end up copping the flak for it… Its worth thinking about….

You yourself have responsibilities and duties to your employer.

 

[Simo]

I think something you need to consider is, if it is YOUR responsibility to manage & control staff travel expenses, and this guy does something outrageous and gets caught, what are the Board of Directors going to say and who are they going to blame? Will they say robd this is YOUR responsibility, why didn't you pick this up? Unless you can show a paper trail where you brought it to the attention of the MD and he refused to act then you may well end up copping the flak for it… Its worth thinking about….

You yourself have responsibilities and duties to your employer.

If it all goes to cough at least if you let the MD know you have done a massive butt covering exercise.

Because if he doing lots of dodgy stuff on the side and he is found out my some one on the board of directors you will have many questions to answer and your position could be placed in jeopardy.

 

[robd]

I agree, I would confront your boss and tell him what you have found out.

IMHO but don't do it like a witch hunt.

I will definitely try again. Yes, he thinks I'm on a witch hunt, but I have other staff members to support me.

I think something you need to consider is, if it is YOUR responsibility to manage & control staff travel expenses, and this guy does something outrageous and gets caught, what are the Board of Directors going to say and who are they going to blame? Will they say robd this is YOUR responsibility, why didn't you pick this up? Unless you can show a paper trail where you brought it to the attention of the MD and he refused to act then you may well end up copping the flak for it… Its worth thinking about….

You yourself have responsibilities and duties to your employer.

Yep. I told him in my initial email, that if I see more of the same, I will formally document it, to cover myself.

If it all goes to cough at least if you let the MD know you have done a massive butt covering exercise.

Because if he doing lots of dodgy stuff on the side and he is found out my some one on the board of directors you will have many questions to answer and your position could be placed in jeopardy.

He's not doing dodgy stuff, he's just too trusting and the new guy is abusing is the trust.

 

[harvyk]

The best thing to do is

1. polish your own resume and say hello to your own network of people (just in case)
2. collect as much evidence of wrong doing as possible - document everything
3. arranged a meeting with the MD and the employee in question and treat it as a please explain session, your not laying blame. Take some other ppls travel expenses (with their permission) and use it as a comparision.
4. arrange a second meeting with the MD to discuss the employee in questions answers

 

[markis10]

I cannot see this having a happy ending at present, lines were not put in place until after they were crossed if in fact they have been instituted at all. If a policy is now in place that's spells out the dos and donts, time needs to be given for folks to get used to the changes (FF program's have grandfather periods as an example of this where negative change notice is required), if this is not done then it looks like any action is reactionary in nature, holding an employee responsible for the oversight of another employee who did not foresee the need for a policy initially until they came along, or just plain white ant'ing.

 

[Blinky]

Our travel policy has been recently adjusted. If we don't provide sufficient notice to get a saver fare, the travel will almost certainly not be approved. We probably won't make budget this year (we have a pretty tough 11% ROI target), and have been directed to use Skype as an alternative to travel wherever possible. Looks like I'll be kissing gold status goodbye when my next card expires in March 2014.

 

[coolumbla]

I operated on a swings and roundabout policy eg if i spent a week overseas i would usually make it back into the office still within the pay fortnight essentially giving the boss a few free days , in exchange for the occasional extra day overseas .
New management has introduced a system where everything is being interpreted according to (An as yet unapproved) travel document that is wrong .
Thus me spending a week overseas and now declining the opportunity to go back to work till next pay fortnight .
A reasonable approach to a travel policy will get more than a strict adherence to the rules approach .
Now to claim every last ATO allowed dollar !

I actually know the policy better than any of my bosses having been here 15 years while they keep rotating!

C (reasonably annoyed)

 

[Simo]

I operated on a swings and roundabout policy eg if i spent a week overseas i would usually make it back into the office still within the pay fortnight essentially giving the boss a few free days , in exchange for the occasional extra day overseas .
New management has introduced a system where everything is being interpreted according to (An as yet unapproved) travel document that is wrong .
Thus me spending a week overseas and now declining the opportunity to go back to work till next pay fortnight .
A reasonable approach to a travel policy will get more than a strict adherence to the rules approach .
Now to claim every last ATO allowed dollar !

I actually know the policy better than any of my bosses having been here 15 years while they keep rotating!

C (reasonably annoyed)

I have operated on the swings and roundabouts policy as well but when they don't want to give and take makes life very hard.

Change of bosses can make it really hard.

 

[ChrisDPom]

We do a lot of intrastate travel in WA - finding hotels for under $150 can be a pain (you should hear the Eastern Staters scream when they realise hotel costs in Perth).
Car metro use is re-imbursed at ATO rates. Car country use is Thrifty standard rate (see below) + they pay fuel.
Meals - use our common sense.
Flights - welcome to WA, please hand over your credit card and a spare pound of flesh.
Hire cars (we have a Thrifty account where we guarantee 100 days hire and they charge us $42.94 per day for a mid size car). If hire in Perth, unlimited kms. If hire in country (usually regional airport pickup, there is a "levy" + only 100km per day + no insurance if driving after dark outside of towns). We have our own corporate insurance for that.
Pay our own Qantas Club if not Gold.
My Europe trips are not re-imbursed as they are mainly personal - I just claim on the tax return for work related expenses without going stupid (waiting that first audit).

 

[wafliron]

Sheesh, reading some of the posts in this thread makes me glad I work for (and own part of, I will note, so it costs me money if someone takes the piss!) a business that just has a "be reasonable" travel policy. We're not a big company - and I appreciate "be reasonable" is probably impractical past a certain size - but definitely bigger than some of the employers being mentioned in this thread that have super-tight travel policies!

This whole discussion - and our own policy - reminds me of the story in Dave Hitz's book about the changes NetApp made to their travel policy at some stage in the company's life (after they were already quite big). They basically replaced a very long and complicated policy with a really simple statement - I don't have the exact wording on hand but it was something like "be reasonable - we're a frugal company but it doesn't make sense for you to turn up dog tired to a critical meeting. Use good judgement and we'll be OK with it". They (and we!) of course checked how employees were implementing this policy, but at the end of the day there was a fundamental trust that people would do the right thing. Trust but verify!

This type of policy has always worked very well for us - our staff appreciate it, and we've literally never had any issue larger than things that could be a called a reasonable difference of opinion over what "be reasonable" is - definitely no cases you'd clearly call "taking the piss". Most people just ask if they're unsure what is considered reasonable and what isn't. And even in those rare cases where there's been a difference of opinion, it's just been a matter of having a simple conversation with the employee involved to ensure our expectations are aligned going forward - no hard feelings, and we've never had a case where the feedback hasn't been adequately "taken on board". I guess this is all helped by us not being too tight in what our definition of "reasonable" is though.

I'll finish by adding that I think overly restrictive travel policies (strictly defined or not) are really quite stupid - that they probably cost businesses more than they save them in many cases. There's many hidden costs in tight travel policies - tired and/or stressed employees don't perform as well (which obviously costs money), unhappy staff will leave the business sooner (which costs money - often lots of money), there's a lot of intangible (but at least partially monetary) benefit in having employees know that the business trusts them, etc.

EDIT: I should have added that the "be reasonable" policy clearly only works when there is some monitoring, and senior management crack down on abuse if it happens. OP, it sounds like your current policy is something like ours, but is now breaking down through non-enforcement. So clearly my post isn't aimed at answering your question - it's just general chit-chat!

Referring to the op, you be the judge -

To put the above in context, I thought I'd perhaps post my take on this - noting this opinion is "in isolation" and ignoring all the others issues you posted about this bloke!

1 hour meeting at Crown Melbourne - Valet Parking $50

Very unreasonable unless he was late by genuine accident or for reasons outside of his control, or genuinely wasn't aware that much cheaper and almost-as-convenient parking is readily available.

Flight Mel - Syd (daytime during office hours) - short term car park MEL (the one that you usually just drop off or pick up from) $115

Reasonable for a more senior person / employee who is highly regarded assuming this is cheaper than taking the trip by taxi, which is quite likely in MEL.

Flight Mel - Syd (no checked baggage) $410 (this was about $135 more than best fare)

Hard to say without knowing why he didn't take BFOD - from very unreasonable is there was no good reason / he simply didn't bother to book until last minute, through to reasonable if there's a decent reason (of course! ). Something like a preference for QF over DJ, assuming there's some logic behind it (e.g. has a QP membership but no DJ lounge membership, or is QF SG+ but no status on DJ), would put this is the pretty reasonable category for me - this level of fare difference is about the max I'd tolerate and I'd like to be asked first though.

Car Hire in Sydney (56kms travelled - 1 person only) - SV6 Holden $138

Based on distance travelled, a bit unreasonable but depends on mitigating circumstances (e.g. ability to accurately predict distance and relative costs before the trip). Based on vehicle choice - for a more senior person / employee who is highly regarded I wouldn't call this unreasonable, but I'd like to be asked about it first.

Meal on the way home from airport at about 5.30pm at Cafe approx. 15 mins from home $51.80

Completely unreasonable - hard to view this any other way.

 

[ChrisDPom]

Further to wafliron's comment, I would have thought the hire car is unreasonable as well.
Why take a hire car and have to go through all the rigmarole of the paperwork, collecting it and then getting it out of the airport when a taxi would be faster - or if heading into town, the train?
No luggage so what is the problem - the queue at the rank can be an issue at Sydney but it took me approx 25 mins to get my hire car at 9.00pm last March.

 

[markis10]

Further to wafliron's comment, I would have thought the hire car is unreasonable as well.
Why take a hire car and have to go through all the rigmarole of the paperwork, collecting it and then getting it out of the airport when a taxi would be faster - or if heading into town, the train?
No luggage so what is the problem - the queue at the rank can be an issue at Sydney but it took me approx 25 mins to get my hire car at 9.00pm last March.

Apart from the excessive rate charged, which means the booking method needs to be looked at (I usually manage to beat my works quotes for hire cars by 20%), hire cars are often quicker and cheaper in Sydney and in most other ports. Everytime I have been to Sydney there has been a massive queue, while walking over to the hire company I can hop in, drive out, show licence and be gone. Last taxi I caught to the city was circa $50, same amount on a Sunday to Bronte, so a round trip sees a green note gone easily, and all the main companies have a non paperwork scheme for free.

 

[robd]

Apart from the excessive rate charged, which means the booking method needs to be looked at (I usually manage to beat my works quotes for hire cars by 20%), hire cars are often quicker and cheaper in Sydney and in most other ports. Everytime I have been to Sydney there has been a massive queue, while walking over to the hire company I can hop in, drive out, show licence and be gone. Last taxi I caught to the city was circa $50, same amount on a Sunday to Bronte, so a round trip sees a green note gone easily, and all the main companies have a non paperwork scheme for free.

C'mon guys. Think about it. You and I know what's going on here. He's booking all his travel with Qantas and the car hire is with Avis!

The actual car hire isn't the problem, it's the class of vehicle that's being booked. You could probably reduce the cost by ~$50 just by hiring a smaller car. It's one person with no bags for 30 min each way drive.

 

[markis10]

C'mon guys. Think about it. You and I know what's going on here. He's booking all his travel with Qantas and the car hire is with Avis!

The actual car hire isn't the problem, it's the class of vehicle that's being booked. You could probably reduce the cost by ~$50 just by hiring a smaller car. It's one person with no bags for 30 min each way drive.

But you get less points for a smaller car.......:shock:. Not to mention a smaller fuel bill, I would be approaching all the companies and getting a corp rate set up, or of self booked, require the cheapest automatic on the day as bookable at QF.com with a printout of the options as proof from the time of booking. I would also look at the insurances, I get a small auto at SYD for circa $50 per day with 3K excess, that's $70 towards an annual travel insurance policy that benefits the company and the traveller for a year. I can get an e class Benz for under $100.

 

[Simo]

C'mon guys. Think about it. You and I know what's going on here. He's booking all his travel with Qantas and the car hire is with Avis!

The actual car hire isn't the problem, it's the class of vehicle that's being booked. You could probably reduce the cost by ~$50 just by hiring a smaller car. It's one person with no bags for 30 min each way drive.

Car hire can be a area of grey. I use to work for a company and there policy was to hire a vehicle similar to the one that was provided by the company. We had Commodore wagons. I was hired a Falcon sedan for a very short drive each way at a huge cost. I had one trip away and all I needed to do was 4 visits to clients so I forgo my Mid size Car and got a smaller car. The cost was more than half between Mid size and the small car. This also back fires as I got please explain on one trip when I was given a Statesman for the price of a Mid size car. Lucky I had my print out from my booking to confirm that I had booked a mid size and had an upgrade.