Talk:Reimbursement Policy
notes on per diems for travel
Valerie and I looked at these pages:
- US, Standard rate can be found here
- http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentType=GSA_BASIC&contentId=21402 The standard M&IE rate is, as of this writing, $46.
- US, specific cities that have different rates can be found here
- http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentType=GSA_BASIC&contentId=17943
We looked at having a policy where a traveler would need to submit receipt for lodging and airline, bus, or train tickets, etc., but would get a percentage of the per diems listed at those pages for Meals & Incidental Expenses.
Notes:
- The M&IE rates for Canadian cities seem much higher than for US cities.
- Not all cities and areas are listed. (Try to find a rate for Salem, OR.)
- I actually spent around 40-42% of the M&IE rate while in Toronto and Vancouver.
Based on all that, I'd suggest starting with approval of maybe 40% for Canadian cities, but maybe as high as 75% for American cities. But we'd want to do some good estimates on actual expenses and see if those rates should be adjusted after we have some data to work with.
The first and last day of travel could be at 75% of whatever rate we settled on.
I was gone 12 days, so that would have been 10 days at 40% of $118 (or $47.20) and 2 days at 75% of that (or $35.40). This totals to $542.80. I have documentation for actually spending about $495.27 but have some phone call expenses and such that have not come in yet.
Or we could just use the standard rate everywhere (which came out pretty close for me on this trip). That is, we could ignore the special rates for whatever cities until and unless the standard rate seems wonky for our purposes.