Some biz travelers are tacking extra days to the end of their business trips to get a little R&R for less. That can cause some serious snags in processing T&E. There’s nothing wrong with that — assuming travelers and their approvers make a distinction between which costs are business-related and reimbursable vs. those that are strictly personal.

It might be worth revising your company’s travel policy to clarify some common areas of confusion for trips like these, including:

• Which days’ hotel charges are considered reimbursable.
• How to handle any shared expenses when a traveler’s spouse or friend takes part on the trip (Example, a shared meal).
• Whether costs that are spread over the business and personal parts of the trip will be reimbursed proportionally. (Example: If a rental car is used for five days, but only three of those days are business related.)

And as usual, you’ll want to remind travelers to be extra vigilant about documenting the “why, when and where” of their expenses. Later on, if an auditor realizes that a trip was partly business/partly personal, they’re likely to look a lot more closely at those expenses.

Tags: A/P, Best practices, Employee communication, Hiring & training staff, T&E, Tax compliance