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.
Eric Woodward is the senior advisor to Socure.
Socure provides digital identity verification and identity fraud prevention. Founded in 2012, the company's mission is to verify 100% of good identities in real time for customers including financial institutions, government agencies and enterprises across all industries.
Prior to Socure, Woodward was engaged in more than a dozen advisory roles — from advising public and private CEOs to senior executives to private equity firms — for digital identity, payments risk and data infrastructure opportunities. Before these advisory positions, Woodward was the group president of Early Warning, a financial institution data consortium, and the parent company of Zelle. During his time at Early Warning, he led the risk services business and initiated the build-out of Zelle's real-time fraud and risk capabilities. Prior to that role, he led the strategy and M&A group at Early Warning.
Peter Pezaris is New Relic's Chief Design and Strategy Officer, leading user experience vision and design and design system and quality. Prior to New Relic, Pezaris was the Founder & CEO of CodeStream, a service that helps development teams discuss, review, and understand code. Before CodeStream, Pezaris was Founder & CEO of Glip, a team collaboration platform acquired by RingCentral in 2015, and Multiply.com, a social commerce platform acquired by Naspers in 2010. He also founded Commissioner.com, one of the first online fantasy sports platforms, which was acquired by CBS in 1999. A seasoned entrepreneur and tech executive, Pezaris is a recognized expert in the collaboration and social networking space, pioneering several of today's most commonly used features in real-time messaging. Pezaris holds BS degrees in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University.
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:
