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.
Jonathan Schiff, Ph.D, is a professor of accounting at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J. He is the author of over 70 articles and research studies on accounting, controls, performance management, CFO practice development, and financial and cost management. He also served as visiting professor of accounting at Columbia University's School of Business and taught in their MBA and executive MBA programs, and was the founder, in 1995, of the Finance Development & Training Institute (www.fdti.org) a 10-member company alliance, chaired by Dell Technologies. He also established several other best practices sharing alliances including the Activity-Based Costing Implementation Group, the Europe-Finance Leadership Institute, the Transit-Finance Learning Exchange and the China Finance Institute. He has served as chairman of a Nasdaq-listed company audit committee and is frequently quoted in the national business media, including Business Week, The Washington Post, USA Today and The New York Times. Schiff received his Ph.D. from New York University. Before completing his master's degree in accounting at NYU, he worked as a staff auditor with Price Waterhouse.
Lars Boeing is a Vice President in Capgemini Invent's Insurance Practice and leads Capgemini's global Future of Claims offering. He has been working for 20+ years in consulting and industry roles, primarily focused on strategy development, customer experience design, efficiency improvement, and business model (re)design.
Sabrina Lee is an editorial intern at American Banker and a Dow Jones Business Reporting Fellow. She is a rising senior at New York University where she has worked as a campus writing tutor and a writer at NYU's student-run newspaper.
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:
