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.
Denelle Dixon is CEO and executive director of the Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit organization supporting the development of open-source blockchain infrastructure. Previously, she served as chief operating officer of Mozilla.
Lauren Tropeano is the chief people officer at Docebo. She brings over 20 years of Human Resources expertise to Docebo, having led diverse, multinational teams for several global, high growth tech organizations, including Skillshare, DraftKings, Cogito, Pivotal Software, and Dell/EMC.
Sarah Rosen is the managing director of private client services at BlackCloak, where she focuses on protecting the personal digital lives of high net worth families and provides tailored cybersecurity solutions to safeguard their digital presence from threats like cybercrime, identity theft and privacy breaches.
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:
