Work Reimbursement

[weleftmn]

I am doing some travel for work and want to bring my family with. Has anyone figured out how to deal with work reimbursement for "hotel" costs? If it is possible.

 

[Jan M.]

If your employer is like my husband's was you need a receipt. If you are a Wyndham owner could you rent the points for the reservation so you would have a dollar amount you are paying. You could take a screen shot or a picture with your cell phone of the page showing how much you were paying for the reservation and use that as a receipt. Or you could show the financial page with your maintenance fees and show how many points you used for the reservation.

We own another timeshare that we have an RCI points account for. When we were in your situation we used our RCI ownership and booked a sale week because it didn't use any points just the fee.

 

[b2bailey]

Perhaps work from the reverse point of view. If you went on Booking.com and sought a room just for yourself, what would it cost?
Is your employer small enough to have a discussion about it?

 

[ausman]

Here is my answer. I'm making some assumptions as to your intentions and situation.
I'm assuming 1) Your employer would reimburse travel and accommodation costs for you, for which it is necessary to file an expense report with backup documentation/invoices.
2) You wish to stay in alternative timeshare accommodations with your family.

The issue then , as I see it, is simply a matter of documentation and or communication. The documentation for accommodation is a matter of showing reasonable charges as per my assumption costs for your accommodation alone are reasonable. The suggestion to show alternative costs from booking .com is a good on. I would make up an invoice or "charge document" outlining the costs of your actual accommodation. As long as the they are reasonably in line with the alternative costs then they are easily justified and should be fine.

The communication issue then depends on your relationship with who or what department approves your expense reports. Whether to have a conversation with an individual or just submit for reimbursement you would be the best judge.

 

[Richardsdeals]

I have done this before. In my case I print out:

1) A copy of my reservation that shows the points charged for the trip.
2) I print out a statement that shows my cost/point. On that I include the dollar amount for the points used for this trip.

I have never done this when I traveled with family. My usage has been with co-workers when we all traveled together for a conference. I have looked up the cost on other booking sights, but it is always much higher than what I pay, so I prefer to do this as an actual cost to me reimbursed transaction rather than trying to make money off the deal.

 

[chapjim]

You should contact your employer's HR department. Explain what you want to do and you should be able to work it out.

Most of my travel has been for the government or for a company under contract to the federal governent

I have done this before. In my case I print out:

1) A copy of my reservation that shows the points charged for the trip.
2) I print out a statement that shows my cost/point. On that I include the dollar amount for the points used for this trip.

I have never done this when I traveled with family. My usage has been with co-workers when we all traveled together for a conference. I have looked up the cost on other booking sights, but it is always much higher than what I pay, so I prefer to do this as an actual cost to me reimbursed transaction rather than trying to make money off the deal.

That will be the problem -- how much of the calculated cost of lodging can be attributed to the employee? Maybe get some examples of rates at local hotels? Something that you'll have to work out with your HR and travel folks. It may be too hard -- you may end up eating it (for the privilege of having your family along!).

 

[Jan M.]

Ask your boss or whoever has the say if you can do this and what they need from you to be able to reimburse you.

When my husband got a new boss he asked the new guy about doing this. His old boss was on short time to retirement and didn't want to be bothered with anything he wasn't already familiar with doing. The new boss was thrilled with only paying around $230 a week for the two weeks my husband was working in that area. And even happier to pay for some groceries rather than what my husband was allowed per day for meals. Some nights my husband ate dinner out but sometimes those meals gave him leftovers to use for the main part of another night's dinner along with whatever else he had in the frig. That isn't an option in many hotel and motel rooms plus they aren't that large. Many people don't want to spend that much time cooped up in them and prefer to eat out as it gets them out of that small room.

 

[weleftmn]

Thanks for the thoughts. Fortunately, I do work for a fairly small company and we may be able to work something out. It will depend a lot on the customer I am working with and the documentation requirements they have for expenses. As chapjim pointed out working with some customers they want detailed receipts for every expense and this likely wouldn't work out so well. I guess it will be a case by case scenario.

I didn't know how much I hated bad hotels until I stayed in one last week for work. It was terrible. There were two Wyndham properties a few miles away, in San Diego. I was tempted to switch.

 

[Jan M.]

Thanks for the thoughts. Fortunately, I do work for a fairly small company and we may be able to work something out. It will depend a lot on the customer I am working with and the documentation requirements they have for expenses. As chapjim pointed out working with some customers they want detailed receipts for every expense and this likely wouldn't work out so well. I guess it will be a case by case scenario.

I didn't know how much I hated bad hotels until I stayed in one last week for work. It was terrible. There were two Wyndham properties a few miles away, in San Diego. I was tempted to switch.

Funny you would say that. Before the old boss retired I accompanied my husband when he was working in the Panama City Beach area for a week. I booked a stay at a timeshare on the beach for us and he made reservation at a motel which was no where near the beach though the company approved travel website. He checked in for his motel reservation and at the end of the week checked out and got his receipt to submit for his expense account but never stayed there. And he was so glad he didn't have to stay there. He had to have a lodging receipt to be eligible to get meals paid for. We could have bought some groceries and cooked dinner but instead we ate dinner out every single night. He was irritated enough that he said we aren't cooking dinner. Since we had to have separate checks at the restaurants he would order and have them put on his check, two beers or two glasses of wine and give me one and usually ordered an appetizer or dessert for us to share too. He could do that and still stay within the parameters of what was acceptable to spend. We would have been content with his company just reimbursing him for the then $219 exchange fee but instead they paid almost $600 for the cheap motel because it was in August and still prime vacation time. And he made sure he spent as much as allowed on food. He was that unhappy about all three of the hotels he was allowed to book in that area being of the same not so great quality.

The old boss use to complain that they hassled him over the expense accounts and he didn't want them giving him more grief but the new boss had no problem at all getting it approved for us to use our timeshare as long as we could submit some kind of receipt. When his new boss submitted the department's expense accounts he was a hero with his boss when he saw the total for the two week stay.

 

[JudiZ]

This is fascinating to me. I don't travel on business but my husband does. He usually stays in downtown Denver and couldn't stay at a timeshare but this whole conversation is amazing to me! The lunacy of bureaucracy that it would be "better" to stay at a more expensive place with fewer amenities but no easily calculated "cost" just makes me shake my head.

 

[schoolmarm]

I do this frequently....there is a lot of planning involved, and hopefully you are not going during high season at a limited availability resort.

1. Use up all you current use year points on other reservations.
2. Book the business travel during the 90-day express period.
3. You will get the option of borrowing from your next use year OR <ding,ding,ding> "renting" points from Wyndham for $$ (about $12/1,000pts)
4. Choose the rent option and pay with your business Purchasing card.
5. You will get a receipt of costs in your reservation confirmation.
6. Turn in receipt.
7. Done.

Of course this works best when traveling alone or with co-workers. My university has regulations about traveling with spouse/family and reimbursement would only be partial, if allowed.

 

[chapjim]

Another tactic might be to rent from an owner, get an invoice for your lodging and submit it for reimbursement.

As I said before, most of my travel has been for the federal government, either as active duty military or as an employee of a government contractor. The federal government model is pretty good. Each locality has a per diem rate with two components -- lodging and M&IE. You get reimbursed for lodging up to a certain limit for the locality but have to present a receipt from the hotel. Some really nice, otherwise unreachable, hotels have a government rate that happens to be exactly the rate in the government travel regulation. I've known people who came to the DC area, lucked out and were able to stay at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City at the government rate.

The second part of a per diem rate is Meals and Incidental Expenses (M&IE), which you get by virtue of being on travel, no questions asked. You could go to Safeway and get a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and no one would know or care. You can claim such things as local transportation (e.g., to/from the airport) and some other reimbursable expenses.

Way back when (up until sometime in the '80s maybe?), to get reimbursed for meals the government required receipts. Really! You had to tape cash register receipts to a piece of paper and submit it with your travel claim. They quit that because the cost of auditing claims was too much. Foreign travel was a problem. What kind of receipt would you get from a restaurant in Turkey, for example? (I know the answer to that -- something handwritten in local currency that had to be converted to $US.) It was a mess so they went to the M&IE thing.

 

[BDMX2]

Does your company do something like "meal in lieu of lodging"? I used to do that a lot when I traveled to Minneapolis for business and stayed with my parents, who lived in the area at the time. I would take them out to dinner for the same cost (or usually much less than) the customary local cost of a hotel room for the night. My company was happy, my parents were happy, and I was happy.

 

[weleftmn]

Does your company do something like "meal in lieu of lodging"? I used to do that a lot when I traveled to Minneapolis for business and stayed with my parents, who lived in the area at the time. I would take them out to dinner for the same cost (or usually much less than) the customary local cost of a hotel room for the night. My company was happy, my parents were happy, and I was happy.

I will do that sometimes when I travel to where my parents live. Works out for everyone.