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.
Sharon George, digital marketing specialist at CEB, now Gartner, specializes in content creation and SEO. Over the past eight years, she has covered a variety of topics including HR, sales, marketing and customer service.
Erik Brown is chief technology officer at GigaTrust, a leading provider of endpoint security and document in-use protection for Windows, iOS and Android devices.
Anthony Macciola is chief innovation officer at ABBYY, a global leader in the intelligent capture of meaningful insights, data and relationships to improve business outcomes. Gartner named ABBYY a “Specialist Software Partner” in its 2017 Market Guide for Robotic Process Automation Software. Anthony has more than 45 patents for technologies in mobility, text analytics, image processing, and process automation. Prior to ABBYY, he was chief technology officer at Kofax.
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:
