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.
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Heeren joined Gradient AI to grow its engineering team and build world-class machine learning offerings. He brings over 30 years of leadership experience building and leading both engineering and product teams across a wide range of industries and problem domains.
Prior to Gradient AI, Heeren was the Chief Technology Officer at Vestmark, where he was recognized as a thought-leader in the wealth management industry and is active in a wide range of industry associations and initiatives, chairing a number of industry committees. He has also served in leadership roles at a number of public and start-up companies including Vignette Corporation, Simulation Sciences Corp., Workgroup Technology Corporation, and MITRE Corporation.
Heeren holds a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and a MS in Computer Engineering from Boston 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:
