Employees working from home during the coronavirus pandemic claimed some outlandish expenses this year, including pricey exercise bikes, facelifts and private jets.
Emburse, an expense management software company, released a compilation Wednesday of some of the craziest expenses it has seen claimed this year, some of which were actually approved. That included $1,895, which was approved as a contribution for an employee's Peloton Bike under the explanation of “for health and wellness.” On the other hand, a $7,600 expense claim for a facelift was submitted under the category of “repairs and maintenance” but was rejected, despite the pressing need to look one’s best during a Zoom meeting.
Amy DeMartine is a principal analyst at Forrester Research. She helps security and risk professionals transform their current software and application security practices to support continuous delivery and improvement, focusing on strong partnerships with application development, operations, and business teams. Her research covers topics such as proactive security design, security testing in the software delivery life cycle, protection of applications in production environments, and remediation of hardware and software flaws.
Previous Work Experience
In her previous role at Forrester, Amy served infrastructure and operations professionals, covering the strategy, design, organization, and implementation of modern service delivery, including continuous delivery, DevOps, and SecureOps. She has more than 20 years of experience in product management, product and technical marketing, development, and operations roles. Her previous experience includes positions at BMC and HP, where she was responsible for driving IT management software products from conception through the product life cycle, all with the purpose of enabling technology professionals to solve their most pressing issues.
Education
Amy holds a master's degree in telecommunications and a bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Colorado.
Barry Cook is the data protection officer at VFS Global. He is a renowned international cyber-security and data protection expert with experience in sectors such as banking, pharma and aviation.
Clyde Seepersad is general manager, training and certification, at The Linux Foundation.
Some expenses weren’t for working from home, but more about getting out of the house safely. An expense claim for a private jet charter costing over $20,000 was submitted and approved under the explanation of “required to limit COVID exposure for international shoots.” Another travel-related expense claim was $2,500 for a helicopter ride, which was not approved.
The $79 expense claim for a dog crate could perhaps be used for travel at some point when that's safer, but in these times it was more plausibly to provide "crate training [for] a new COVID puppy to not run into Zoom meetings."
Below is an infographic produced by Emburse showing this and several other head-scratching claims:
