Steal This Corporate Travel & Expense Policy
Steal This Corporate Travel & Expense Policy
You are what your expense policy says you are
A company’s Travel and Expense Policy, while on the surface nothing to write home about, reflects a firm’s underlying culture.
Are you frugal? Do you get together a lot in person? Are company off-sites where the major decisions take place? What’s the company’s stance on parties and alcohol? Can you estimate how many people will get fired for swimming in the hotel lobby’s fountain during All Hands?
Editor’s note: Weirdly enough, I’ve now worked at TWO companies where someone was fired for swimming in the hotel lobby’s fountain.
All of these themes are reflected in a company's T&E doc. Hand me a company's policy, and I’ll tell you all about exec leadership’s attitudes towards work (and play).
With companies across the country leaning into work from home (except Zoom, the number one work from home tool), it’s become increasingly important to design guardrails that allow for meaningful, yet cost conscious, in-person interactions between employees, partners and customers.
Sharpen your pencils
I recently sat down to write our company’s travel and expense policy for the first time as a CFO. I had previously budgeted and analyzed thousands of expense reports as an FP&A leader in the years prior. But I had never written a new policy from scratch.
And I was shocked at how few resources there were to help me get started.
In hopes of assisting others, I’m partnering with Brex to give you a free template that you can use as a starting point to write your own T&E policy. You can add and subtract categories as you wish.
Some broad strokes I’d encourage your Travel and Expense policy to address in some way, shape, or form:
Who at the company gets a corporate card? Everyone? Directors and above? Only the CEO’s direct reports? What about virtual cards?
Where do you book travel? Do flights and hotels have to be booked through a centralized booking platform like Empower? Can employees shop on any vendor website they’d like?
How do reimbursements work? Are they automated? Can you forward receipts through email or text?
Who approves stuff? What level of involvement and oversight do you expect from executives at the company? Is it decentralized, where department leaders approve trips and expenses? Or does everything run through finance and accounting?
What class of airfare do you allow? Can employees book a better class if they are higher up in the org? Do employees get to book a more comfortable seat if they are flying more than a certain number of hours? What about international travel or red eyes?
What’s the food per diem? How much can employees spend each day on food while they are traveling? Is it a total amount per day? Do you give ranges by meals?
Can I take customers out? Can employees spend more when they are entertaining a client? What activities are on or off limits?
Where should we meet for internal meetings? When employees get together in person, can they go anywhere? Or should they try to meet at an office or central location to cut down on travel?
What guardrails do you set on alcohol purchases? Can employees expense alcohol before a certain hour of the day? Is there a limit on the number of drinks per person that can be expensed?
And a final tip - don’t be afraid to call out scenarios you think are pretty crazy. I’ve seen employees try to expense haircuts before big meetings, or ask to be reimbursed for dog sitting. I even had one guy try to expense Super Bowl tickets (I didn’t get the invite, unfortunately).
Remember - an expense policy might appear boring, but the implications of getting it wrong are anything but.
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Run the Numbers
Also on Spotify / Apple
This week my guest is Adam Swissicki, the current CFO at Rippling and former CFO at Brex. Adam is the right hand to Parker Conrad. They’re scaling a compound startup that’s taking on HR, IT, and Finance needs all at once.
On this episode we cover:
How a CFO allocates resources when you are building something so grand and ambitious
How Rippling thinks about the lifetime value of a customer
How competitive moats have evolved in the workforce management space over time
Why execution eats strategy for breakfast
Avoiding burnout and decision making fatigue
How short selling earlier in his career changed how he sees the tech landscape
And much more
This was a bucket list interview for me - I’ve long been fascinated by how Rippling is executing on such an ambitious vision, and speaking with the wizard moving the levers within the operating model was illuminating.
(PS - Parker still approves all expenses over $15 bucks, lol)
Quote I’ve Been Pondering
“The Runner wants to be broke at precisely the moment he no longer needs his coin.”
-Once a Runner by John L. Parker