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.
Wilson Man serves as Principal Consultant in Liferay’s Global Services division. A seventeen-year veteran of the enterprise software industry, Wilson received his BS in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of California, Davis.
Patrick La Pine is president and CEO of the League of Southeastern Credit Unions, which serves CUs in Florida and Alabama.
Vinay Pai is an experienced technology executive with a track record of leading high-performing international organizations and driving technology transformation at scale and business growth globally. As the senior vice president of engineering at Bill.com, he leads the technology teams that develop and deliver the Bill.com product portfolio. Prior to joining Bill.com, he was SVP of engineering at First Data, where he led engineering for the Clover point-of-sale product line. Earlier, Pai held several leadership roles in the small business group during his eight years at Intuit, which he joined as part of the PayCycle acquisition. Most recently, as vice president for Intuit Developer Platform, he led the business segment responsible for the QuickBooks ecosystem of third-party applications and developers. He has also held engineering leadership roles at Cassatt, Sun Microsystems and Schlumberger, and founded a startup on the Apple platform that delivered three products.
Pay has MS electrical engineering, BS electrical engineering and BA computer science degrees from Rice 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:
