Yeah permie now Vinney. And yes you’re right, I could be carrying out some elaborate scam. Guilty until proven innocent seems to be how it work 🙁

But based upon your posts’ its not like you’re not experienced in business ‘travel’ – so surely you’d have checked out the policies before spending anything?

IME some organisations/Managers demand everything, and others just enough to ensure that the tax man is happy. What did you do as a contractor?

I’ve worked places where you had to attach the boarding pass to the expense claim – its a kinda confirmation that you actually took the flight been claimed for, rather than claimed for BA, went RyanAir. The ticket confirmation doesn’t do this, as you could still cancel it afterwards.

The train ticket is only to be expected, surely you asked for a receipt when purchasing it?

What is the context here? Has the firm had their wrists slapped by HM Revenue for poor record keeping? Have they been done over by excessive claims before? Previous fraud issues? What you see depends on where you are standing.

(I’m not saying they are right – but there may be reasons for their approach)

Well when I spent the money I planned on keeping all my receipts and assumed that this would be fine. Somewhere between travelling and making the claim I may have lost the actual ticket for the train trip, or the ticket barrier ate it, not sure. The boarding pass stub I am fairly sure I included in the envelope.

No idea about the company btw, they are huge and complex, and I only know about my team.

VAT’s a bit of a red herring — air travel isn’t subject to VAT, so you won’t be getting a VAT receipt from an airline.

(I know the OP didn’t mention VAT but a few people have 🙂 )

Does sound odd, company I work for is anally-retentive about procedures inc. expenses/travel but even they’d pay up in this case. If you can prove the purchase (credit card etc.) then that should be fine, where VAT is incurred it’s a PITA for the finance department but even ours manage to cope with it. Given they hadn’t sorted out your company credit card and you weren’t taken through the expense/travel procedure I can’t understand why they won’t make allowances. Worst case just take £500 worth of post-it notes/pens/pads etc. (assuming you have access to a stationary cupboard) :p

A lot of companies have travel restriction in place currently, mine certainly does. Any travel has to be approved in advance and if an employee doesn’t gain approval then they run the risk of being left out of pocket.

The OP hasn’t clarified if his travel plans/costs were OK’d in advance.

I always make a photocopy of all forms & reciepts when I put in my expenses as they have been known to go missing in the past while they go through the system. Saves so much time & grief.

That sucks. I use Expensify on my Jesus Phone to photograph and compile expenses reports. It’s bloody good, free and there is a web interface to let you manage it more easily.

http://www.expensify.com

*other expenses programmes and phone types are available.

Has the firm had their wrists slapped by HM Revenue for poor record keeping?

Handing in your boarding pass has nothing to do with HMRC. It’s a load of old cobblers! The company has the receipt for the ticket so seems like they are just being difficult pure and simple.

Our employees regularly have to travel with work. We require receipts for their expenses yes, but equally we have to understand that occasionally things get lost, or often it’s just not possible to get a receipt from some things – particularly in the less developed countries.

Generally we issue a reasonable amount of petty cash to anyone who’s traveling and they mostly have company credit cards. Occasionally though if staff are in the situation where they have to spend their own money then we refund them as soon as they submit their claim. I don’t see any reason why our company should be using our own employees as an extra line of credit.

It’s all about trusting your employees at the end of the day. Sure if someone was taking the p**s then we’d have words but we find that generally if you treat staff fairly then the goodwill you get back more than makes up for it.

No receipts needed for items under £25 here. No manager sign off either. We are expected to be grown up. Travel is always booked on a corporate CC though. My last reimbursement was for a bus fare to LHR for £4.25. Cheaper than the £70 taxi quote. As mentioned, it’s about trust.

I could photoshop an old easy jet boarding pass for you?

My work has now got rid of corporate cards, meaning you need to fund all your expenses yourself. I don’t understand why an employer thinks it acceptable for their employees to give them an interest free loan every time they need to do work on the company’s behalf!

“My work has now got rid of corporate cards, meaning you need to fund all your expenses yourself. I don’t understand why an employer thinks it acceptable for their employees to give them an interest free loan”

i got a reasonably workable solution …. i just made the minimum payments on the card to ensure my credit rating wasnt damaged but so i wasnt using my own cash to fund them and then billed all interest on the account till it was paid in full by the company back to the company.

They got the idea and my approvals are made very very swiftly these days and hotels/flights are paid for at booking by the travel department.

I often utilise my credit card bill as evidence but all companies have different rules of course.
My previous company just said “don’t take the pi$$” and paid for everything on a credit card.

My colleagues based in Germany have to go through a horrible process with expenses and receipts must be absolutely correct. For hotel bills your exact corporate adress must be mentioned.

If you can provide evidence that you paid for the items (receipts or bank statements) I imagine that would stand up in court and as said above, the boarding card does not show the price.

I would ask them to be reasonable about it and say you’ll meet their exact requirements next time. If this doesn’t work, threaten them with leagal action and rufuse any further business travel until they pay up.

My company credit card statements haven’t been checked for a couple of years. I haven’t even seen them myself. I’ve got a huge pile of receipts but I don’t think my boss can face the prospect of going through them all.

Make the invaluable personnel in HR spend some unpaid time away from home/family and then see how restrictive they are with travel spend and claiming expenses.

The OP hasn’t clarified if his travel plans/costs were OK’d in advance.

They said ‘go to Edinbiurgh’. I imagine that included an implicit approval of travel plans, but I could be wrong 🙂

ticket barrier ate it,

A very, very good point – a lot of auto barriers do this now!

as is the one regarding mobile phone boarding passes.

I’d say thats your get out clause, their ‘protocol’ does not work in the real world.

I’m going to play the ‘process wasn’t explained’ card. The only reason I kept the boarding pass stub in the first place was that a colleague happened to mention it.

molgrips – Member
My employer rejected my expense claim on account of not having the actual tickets for a train journey and boarding pass for a plane journey

The start of a failing company, or poor management, had this a few years ago when invoicing for work done,they started sending memos back, to say they wanted more detail every time,despite everything being in order and signed off, eventually they went bust, big time.

A very, very good point – a lot of auto barriers do this now!

as is the one regarding mobile phone boarding passes.

I’d say thats your get out clause, their ‘protocol’ does not work in the real world.

Not very grown up responses though.

You show the ticket to the person on the barrier and they let you through without having to surrender the ticket.
e-boarding passes are optional.

Does sound like the company (or more likely some little empire builder in finance / hr) is being a dick though.

Id argue boarding cards are optional

For me to get a boarding card means waiting in queues for ages to get to a person or even worse dealing with the machines !