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.
Yevgeny Shrago is policy director at Public Citizen’s Climate Program.
Yogendra (Yogi) leads the company’s efforts in developing and implementing new growth strategies in North and South America. While positioning WNS for continued growth, Yogi also oversees the Growth and Strategy function, and advisor relations in these markets. He is responsible for planning, designing and implementing processes to support business growth by defining customer segments and new markets. Yogi brings with him proven capability in service delivery, transition, operations re-engineering, client management, pre-sales and sales. He began his BPM career in 1999 with GE Capital and has managed operations for GE Australia.
Suhas Sethi is the Head of the Global Insurance Business Unit at WNS. He has close to three decades of experience in global financial services BPM.
He leads a specialized team of 11,000+ domain experts at WNS. Suhas’ service portfolio spans across Life, Pensions, Property & Casualty Insurance and includes end-to-end Business & Digital Services across Underwriting, Policy Maintenance, and Claims. In addition to delivering on the core Insurance back office operational excellence, Suhas’ portfolio includes knowledge intensive areas like customer sales and servicing, actuarial, data analytics, and finance and accounting. Besides the business leadership and P&L accountability, Suhas is also responsible for Enterprise Risk and Process Compliance for the Insurance BU.
Prior to WNS, he has donned leadership roles at Cognizant and GE / Genpact.
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:
