Expense Reports

One of the downsides of traveling a lot for work is that I often get stuck doing expense reports. When I was at Oracle, I was forced to do them every week. Fortunately I can now do them once a month but it is a painful process. My company uses a Software as a Service (SaaS) expense reporting solution. I hate it. I am fairly certain it was designed by someone that never ever had to fill out an expense report. Especially someone that never had to fill out an international one.

It takes me a while to get through my expense report and when I finally think I have done everything correctly, I get to deal with our accounts payable department. There are a number of little rules that we have and it is tough to keep them all straight. For instance, we have a daily food maximum of $100 for some cities and $125 for others. We also have the rule that the highest ranking employee pays for the meal and so I often get stuck paying the bill. This maximum food allowance carries through for people all from the same company. However if there is someone who works for our parent company, but not the US branch, then the expense item goes from a "meal" to "entertainment" and any limits on food go away. That means I have had expense reports kicked back because someone at the table was miscategorized as an employee when they should have been a guest. This delays payment by at least a week or two.

Last month I was in Japan and then I was in San Diego at the beginning of last week. Guess what that means? Yep, I am in the middle of doing my expense report. Nope, I don't like it.