Work Expenses

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Trevor Morley's Tache

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I've just gone full Basil Fawlty whilst trying to submit work expenses for a trip I did last week. I would hate to know what my blood pressure is right now.

It's a fucking shit system where you have to create a trip prior to travel, which has 4 levels of authorisation (reliant on the 'authorisers' actually being in the office), and you have to pick which budget the money comes out of and ensure you have the correct corresponding authorisation code. Then you have to make sure your personal profile has the correct credit card associated with it, and as I found out on the day I was originally due to travel, if you get any of that incorrect, the trip will get cancelled without warning because the default credit card is the incorrect one and it doesn't warn you.

I was due to fly back to the UK 17th May. Checked my work travel app on the Friday prior to flying the next day, all fine. Saturday morning, flights cancelled. Spent 3 hours on the phone rebooking for the following day. Ended up traveling a day late, and being totally fucking jetlagged for my meeting on the Tuesday morning.

Anyway, fast forward to today and I'm trying to submit my receipts, and I can't access the work OneDrive to upload the receipts which also have to be a specific format and file size. Spent an hour trying to frig the files to be able to upload them, and I find out the fucking Travel app is down for maintenance.

I'm fucking FUMING!!! GIVE ME MY MONEY YOU CUNTS!!!!

And.... BREATHE.
 
Trevor Morley's Tache said:
I've just gone full Basil Fawlty whilst trying to submit work expenses for a trip I did last week. I would hate to know what my blood pressure is right now.

It's a fucking shit system where you have to create a trip prior to travel, which has 4 levels of authorisation (reliant on the 'authorisers' actually being in the office), and you have to pick which budget the money comes out of and ensure you have the correct corresponding authorisation code. Then you have to make sure your personal profile has the correct credit card associated with it, and as I found out on the day I was originally due to travel, if you get any of that incorrect, the trip will get cancelled without warning because the default credit card is the incorrect one and it doesn't warn you.

I was due to fly back to the UK 17th May. Checked my work travel app on the Friday prior to flying the next day, all fine. Saturday morning, flights cancelled. Spent 3 hours on the phone rebooking for the following day. Ended up traveling a day late, and being totally fucking jetlagged for my meeting on the Tuesday morning.

Anyway, fast forward to today and I'm trying to submit my receipts, and I can't access the work OneDrive to upload the receipts which also have to be a specific format and file size. Spent an hour trying to frig the files to be able to upload them, and I find out the fucking Travel app is down for maintenance.

I'm fucking FUMING!!! GIVE ME MY MONEY YOU CUNTS!!!!

And.... BREATHE.
Click to expand...
Just retire mate.

I did, nobody needs shit like that.

Idaho knows how you feel, his concrete is in the wrong place. But all Callum has to worry about is the dictionary being wrong because he's a hippie in Morrocco. :)
 
Bill Walker said:
Just retire mate.

I did, nobody needs shit like that.

Idaho knows how you feel, his concrete is in the wrong place. But all Callum has to worry about is the dictionary being wrong because he's a hippie in Morrocco. :)
Click to expand...
Thankfully, it isn't an everyday thing. It's just a shit system that isn't fit for purpose and isn't likely to change any time soon.
 
I had one the other week. I had to drop someone off for a 3 hour meeting, it was a 5 mile round trip - and then I had to pick them up.
Claimed for each trip and it was a case of “computer says no…”
It wouldn’t accept that I made the same trip twice in the same day.
So I thought “fuck it” and claimed for a single trip using the following days date.
So two trips to the same place on two days.

Next day I get an email from payroll informing me that the person I had put down as giving a lift to on the 2nd day, wasn’t in that day according to the schedule……

I replied that it was the same person I took the 1st day and I picked her up the first day too but the computer wouldn’t accept two journeys to the same place on the same day so I simply did the same 5 mile round trip and put it on the day after.

Email comes back: “But you signed at the end of the claim that it was accurate and any false claims could lead to the claim being denied and disciplinary action taken.

My reply - which I copied my immediate supervisor into went something like this:
“If I wanted to defraud the company it would be for slightly more than 5x 56c per mile. Think about that before refusing my $2.80 claim and please consider any disciplinary action as my resignation. Thank you.

End result: No further comment from payroll, a nice high five from my immediate supervisor and my full $5.60 expenses included in my next wages.
 
It should be the law that every company that makes the employee put in an expense claim also has to pay overtime for the amount of time it takes to put the expense claim in. My last one took 3 months to come in. Didn't have the expense claiming software on my computer (the fact that we're all our own IT support these days is another rant btw). Tried to request it, but it wasn't on the list of software you're allowed to request. So I had to open another tech support ticket just to find out how to request it. Told that for that particular software, I had to put the request into a different team to every other software. Then I'm not registered properly on their system, so I have to go through a whole load of other bullshit to do that. Then when I put my request in, I get an email saying I've done it wrong, because I didn't know some obscure code. Then they send the expense for confirmation, but they don't have the correct line manager listed, so it goes to someone who I don't know. It gets automatically rejected, because that person is on holiday, and doesn't answer quickly enough. I have to go through the whole process again and it finally gets accepted. And the most annoying part of that was that the whole expense was caused by a visa run I had to do because someone in the office cocked up my initial work permit.

Companies claim that all of this is to offer oversight, but I wonder how many legitimate expenses go unclaimed because of bullshit like this. Many times more than any fraud, I'd guess.

And then to add insult in injury, I got an email in April reminding me to please make sure that all of my expense claims for a month are submitted as a single claim to avoid unnecessary admin and facilitate the prompt payment. This was in reference to a claim I'd made in January 2024. So just a year and four months to get back to me with that bit of feedback.
 
we used to have a print out of our expenses and get it signed by the boss, all easy.

Now we have a stupid app, have to take a pic of every individual receipt and if one is missing the app goes into alert mode and you feel like you've broken the law.
 
I remember once many years ago when I just started my career in the corporate world a seasoned colleague telling me that many processes in a big company are designed to stop you wanting to do something.

Want go rack up cost at the company's expense? Fill this mother of a form in, get it signed by 5 people and you get reimbursed weeks later after 7 other people have checked it and talked about you and what your up to....

The modern system has captured that mentality in digital form.
 
Trevor Morley's Tache said:
I've just gone full Basil Fawlty whilst trying to submit work expenses for a trip I did last week. I would hate to know what my blood pressure is right now.

It's a fucking shit system where you have to create a trip prior to travel, which has 4 levels of authorisation (reliant on the 'authorisers' actually being in the office), and you have to pick which budget the money comes out of and ensure you have the correct corresponding authorisation code. Then you have to make sure your personal profile has the correct credit card associated with it, and as I found out on the day I was originally due to travel, if you get any of that incorrect, the trip will get cancelled without warning because the default credit card is the incorrect one and it doesn't warn you.

I was due to fly back to the UK 17th May. Checked my work travel app on the Friday prior to flying the next day, all fine. Saturday morning, flights cancelled. Spent 3 hours on the phone rebooking for the following day. Ended up traveling a day late, and being totally fucking jetlagged for my meeting on the Tuesday morning.

Anyway, fast forward to today and I'm trying to submit my receipts, and I can't access the work OneDrive to upload the receipts which also have to be a specific format and file size. Spent an hour trying to frig the files to be able to upload them, and I find out the fucking Travel app is down for maintenance.

I'm fucking FUMING!!! GIVE ME MY MONEY YOU CUNTS!!!!

And.... BREATHE.
Click to expand...
any chance your using concur system to claim.......right pain in the arse
 
Trevor Morley's Tache said:
I've just gone full Basil Fawlty whilst trying to submit work expenses for a trip I did last week. I would hate to know what my blood pressure is right now.

It's a fucking shit system where you have to create a trip prior to travel, which has 4 levels of authorisation (reliant on the 'authorisers' actually being in the office), and you have to pick which budget the money comes out of and ensure you have the correct corresponding authorisation code. Then you have to make sure your personal profile has the correct credit card associated with it, and as I found out on the day I was originally due to travel, if you get any of that incorrect, the trip will get cancelled without warning because the default credit card is the incorrect one and it doesn't warn you.

I was due to fly back to the UK 17th May. Checked my work travel app on the Friday prior to flying the next day, all fine. Saturday morning, flights cancelled. Spent 3 hours on the phone rebooking for the following day. Ended up traveling a day late, and being totally fucking jetlagged for my meeting on the Tuesday morning.

Anyway, fast forward to today and I'm trying to submit my receipts, and I can't access the work OneDrive to upload the receipts which also have to be a specific format and file size. Spent an hour trying to frig the files to be able to upload them, and I find out the fucking Travel app is down for maintenance.

I'm fucking FUMING!!! GIVE ME MY MONEY YOU CUNTS!!!!

And.... BREATHE.
Click to expand...
I used to work out of an Office in Manchester but the company office was in London (Corsham Street). My expenses were sent to HQ for approval each month.

On one of my visits to London the Gaffer’s PA said to me, “we really look forward to your (and my boss’s) expenses coming in, we have a right laugh” she went on to say I should put “Once Upon a Time” as the header.

She was right, the expenses were quite economical with the truth but also totally necessary, I mean you can’t put in a claim for 3 bottles of champagne at £30 a pop but a made up hotel stay for the same amount looked far better.

The gaffer btw was called Nigel Payne, he was part owner of the Grand National winner Earth Summit along with 4 others including Hereford footballer Ricky George, he really didn’t give a monkeys about falsified expenses as long as the job was attended to. It all changed when Nigel left, very much for the worse.
 
I'm With Stupid said:
It should be the law that every company that makes the employee put in an expense claim also has to pay overtime for the amount of time it takes to put the expense claim in. My last one took 3 months to come in. Didn't have the expense claiming software on my computer (the fact that we're all our own IT support these days is another rant btw). Tried to request it, but it wasn't on the list of software you're allowed to request. So I had to open another tech support ticket just to find out how to request it. Told that for that particular software, I had to put the request into a different team to every other software. Then I'm not registered properly on their system, so I have to go through a whole load of other bullshit to do that. Then when I put my request in, I get an email saying I've done it wrong, because I didn't know some obscure code. Then they send the expense for confirmation, but they don't have the correct line manager listed, so it goes to someone who I don't know. It gets automatically rejected, because that person is on holiday, and doesn't answer quickly enough. I have to go through the whole process again and it finally gets accepted. And the most annoying part of that was that the whole expense was caused by a visa run I had to do because someone in the office cocked up my initial work permit.

Companies claim that all of this is to offer oversight, but I wonder how many legitimate expenses go unclaimed because of bullshit like this. Many times more than any fraud, I'd guess.

And then to add insult in injury, I got an email in April reminding me to please make sure that all of my expense claims for a month are submitted as a single claim to avoid unnecessary admin and facilitate the prompt payment. This was in reference to a claim I'd made in January 2024. So just a year and four months to get back to me with that bit of feedback.
Click to expand...
On the system I'm currently using I am mandated to submit receipts within 5 days of returning. The last claim took 2 months to get paid into my account. Luckily, I have enough funds to cover this, but some of the younger guys don't. It's a piss take really. They can claim an 'advance' but it always ends up screwing up their pay which takes ages to sort out.
 
I once worked for a large City centre Accountants.
I had recently joined them after a merger with the firm I previously worked for.
I was at one of its clients which was in north Manchester when I lived in South Manchester and it was a pig to get to because of the traffic as it was pre M60 ring road adding 1/2 an hour each way to my daily journey time.
I submitted my travel expenses which was at the standard rate of 45 per mile.
The Audit Manager pulled me up over my travel claim on the basis that it was 2 miles less from the Office to the client than it was from home to the client and he went to the trouble of getting a map out to prove it.
Christ, the Client must have paid about £200 for the privilege of him working out an over claim of about £8.
On this occasion he was prepared to let it through.
I said fine, in future I will travel in to the Office each day and leave for the client at 9.00 am and the Firm can stand the extra 1/2 hour travel time.
I ended up leaving within 2 months because in those days accountancy vacancies were two a penny.
 
I was lucky enough to work as a commissioning engineer for at the time a forward thinking machine builder and they were very straight forward any flights over seven hours was business class, hotels Holiday Inn or similar, food and drink were pretty much anything you wanted apart from champers just get receipts and £35.00 per day unreceipted.

Anything you needed just get it was their view was you will be away for at least four weeks away in varying countries and in some absolute shitholes from time to time that a anything spent on your mental well being was worth it. So much so they also paid a weekly hardship payment of around £375.00.

We kept our own float of a couple of grand of dollars and had a company credit card, a proper thunder birds International Rescue card for medical stuff.

What the upshot was that nobody ever felt the need to make false claims as you were so well looked after, claims were done via an excel sheet and the line managers same question every time "Have you took the piss?" if the answer was negative then signed off they were.

However I once had to spend four months in South Korea and I reckon it took close to three days to finish off my accounts.

I've worked for big German and Swiss outfits and every time they make you feel like your fucking stealing from them for having the audacity to have a beer and a bite to eat while on company business.
 
When I was in the Civil Service I had to attend meetings in Sale from Oldham.

They'd rather authorise less mileage though the City Centre (told me they'd only pay the shortest mileage journey) than round the M60 even though I'd be able to save more than the difference in wages using the motorway thus making the M60 more cost effective.
 
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