Company Travel Policies

Image via Wikipedia

I'm curious about what other people do for this, but from what I can tell, my company is pretty normal as far as sending people on trips and then reimbursing expenses.

I recently went to Europe and then spent at least an entire day compiling receipts, organizing them, entering them into spreadsheets, and requesting reimbursement.  What I find interesting about this is that my wasted time in requesting reimbursement is valuable, and I can only imagine how many people across the company are doing this every day.  Are we saving money?  Is the employee stress and attention to expenses worth the effort?

The Solution:  I think instead of worrying about every little expense, receipt, and justification, set a per diem for employees for meals, and then have them keep track of major travel expenses and hotel only.  This way, the costs for the company are set as far as meals go before the trip is even taken, and the employee should not end up spending much time working on expense reports instead of making the company money.  Each destination should have a specific per diem and if an employee can eat cheaper than that, then they benefit.  It's a win-win.

What does your company do?