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.
Martha Salinas is a senior vice president at Multi Service Technology Solutions
Dr. Jans Aasman is chief executive officer of Franz Inc., a supplier of graph database technology for the Semantic Web. Dr. Aasman's previous experience and educational background include: KPN Research, the research lab of the major Dutch telecommunication company; tenured professor in industrial design at the Technical University of Delft. Title of the chair: Informational Ergonomics of Telematics and Intelligent ProductsCarnegie Mellon University; visiting scientist at the Computer Science Department of Prof. Dr. Allan Newell; rsearcher at the Traffic Research Center of the University of Groningen (The Netherlands); eperimental and cognitive psychology at the University of Groningen, wwith specialization in psychophysiology and cognitive psychology.
Daniele Catteddu us chief technology officer at the Cloud Security Alliance.
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:
