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.
Tom Brown is a partner and general counsel at Nyca Partners, and a special advisor at Paul Hastings, LLP.
Phil Calvin is chief product officer at Delinea and brings more than 25 years of software development, technical leadership and entrepreneurial experience to Delinea. His areas of expertise include technical strategy, cloud architecture, and engineering executive management. Prior to Delinea, Calvin spent nearly a decade at Salesforce in a variety of architectural and engineering leadership roles, most recently leading the platform engineering organization and focusing on making the Salesforce platform trusted, accessible and scalable. His earlier career included several startups and engineering roles, including serving as principal architect at Citrix after an acquisition of another one of his companies.
Patrice Meagher is the Founder and CEO of MilkMate, an all-in-one multi-user pumping system purpose-built for the workplace wellness room.
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:
