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.
Paul Clark is a senior counsel in the Washington office of the law firm Seward & Kissel and a lecturer at Berkeley Law. He has specialized in brokered deposit products and issues for over 30 years.
Ray Walsh leads InvoiceCloud's insurance vertical, helping property and casualty carriers modernize the way they bill, collect, and disburse payments to policyholders. He brings deep experience in enterprise SaaS sales and go-to-market leadership, having previously served as Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Brightcove and Senior Vice President of Global Sales at TransAct Technologies, where he led global sales strategy across restaurant and gaming solutions.
Robert Vane is the co-founder of the Q6FSA Method for Global Information Management, a freelance full enterprise scope data architect “with over 25 years experience of getting it all wrong, now dedicated to solving the foundational root causes of failure within the information management space and getting it all right.”
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:
