Your company may be small, but if there is a group of workers who travel for work reasons on a more or less regular basis, your company must have a clear company expenses policy. Compiling in a corporate document all the rules that you and your team more or less know will help you make them official and will help create a basis from which to tackle possible incidents.
Creating an expenses policy need not be a very complex task. Don’t start from zero. This is not the first time your team reports their expenses. You know the majority of expenses they incur. Solely take all that knowledge and everything it entails and make it black and white: explore the range of possible situations, attach exact figures to each point, set limits well, etc.
The golden rule is to be clear and concise. A good expenses policy must be easy to understand and remember. Something that usually works is to divide the policy into sections: hotels, subsistence, travel, etc. That will make it easier for you to compile possible scenarios and regulate them, and it will be easier for everyone to remember them.
It is useful to add a specific section for non-reimbursable expenses. You can start from your experience. Which non-reimbursable elements are usually contained in your team’s expenses claims? Meals with companions, alcohol, expenses incurred outside working hours... you know better than anyone.
It is important to ensure your team know which measures are to be taken to ensure compliance with the expenses policy. You only need to disclose that expenses claims will be carefully inspected one by one by a manager, and they may be rejected if they do not comply with the aforementioned rules.
Another important point to bear in mind that if you decide to make a company expenses policy official, you need to control it. Be conscientious when inspecting expenses claims. If you stop being thorough, you will probably notice a relaxation in compliance with the rules.
Finally, the company expenses policy should not be a final document. Test and retest it, but do it in an orderly fashion. If not, you could end up disorientating the staff.
Would you advise anything else in establishing a company expenses policy properly?
