To have claimed this as an expense?

If you were well enough to get the train I can see why they wouldn't pay.

If it was business travel ie OP was on an expensed business trip anyway, possibly. OP hasn’t said whether her original tickets were paid by company expense, just that she lives quite far away.

As she says in the OP, her original ticket was for a set time so didn't cover her earlier journey home.

Whilst it's logical to you OP, it sounds like it was in breach of the company expenses policy. The company offered to pay for a specific method of transport at a specific time for a specific reason. You've taken it upon yourself to use a different method, and whilst it was cheaper, it wasn't what had been authorised.

You didn't check prior to incurring the expense nor submitting your claim.

Best thing you could do is ask for a meeting with HR and management, accept you made a mistake in submitting the expense without prior approval, but that you had sought to act in the company's interests in saving money. You might get a verbal or written warning.

Hope the situation that caused the initial upset is resolved.

Next time just take the flipping taxi!

I completely disagree with those who say you can’t expense the train ticket because it’s your usual mode of transport.

From the sounds of it, you were distressed enough that you needed to get home immediately. There isn’t a requirement that employees in distress take a taxi. You can of course decide that you need to leave, but are in a fit enough state to take the train.

Your ticket wouldn’t cover the journey at that time. It seems entirely feasible in the circumstances to have expensed the additional £20.

As others have said, I’d point out you were distressed, were conscious of the expense of a taxi to the company, and were balancing taking care of yourself against that company expense. I’d clarify if, in future, the company would prefer you take the taxi at £100. I expect they’ll realise how unreasonable they’re being and pay the £20.

If possible, I’d get the manager to confirm they’d offered the cost of a taxi.

No good deed goes unpunished. You should just have taken the taxi and let the company pay, I can see the argument that if you were well enough to put yourself into a train, you didn't need to go home in the first place (I'm not saying I agree with that, but I can kind of see the argument) You may have to eat the cost, but you didn't do anything bad, you were just overpunctilious.

Hope all is well now.
I think you've made things unnecessarily complicated, albeit with the best of intentions. AS others have said, if you were able to take a train, you can be perceived as not needing a taxi, especially if that's how you normally get home.
Surely if you explain to HR what you've explained here, it should be fine.

How do you mean they've 'treated you like you've stolen from them' though?

Do you mean they have queried an unexpected expense? Because that is perfectly normal!

A taxi journey paid for by them would likely be via taxi firm they have an account with, rather than a cash expense to pay back to an employee. So if they're expecting a taxi bill... and they get an unexpected cash sum to pay to you... that's why they're querying it. Just explain what happened!

What justification would the line manager have for going outside of policy though?

because expenses are high risk they are heavily audited. If OPs expense comes up in a test sample the line manager could be in trouble but is also likely to cause further testing of expenses which could cause audit delays and further audit expense.

you can’t have a policy then just over ride it, particularly in a high risk area.

It would depend on how you would usually get home, if you normally get the train then your basically claiming for your journey home which I'm assuming you wouldn't usually get paid for you?
I think they've looked at it as they offered the taxi home and would have paid for that but you refused and made your own way home, early or not, so therefor they aren't liable.

So you usually get a train home?

The office has them available in the loos so I'd probably be taking the piss with that one! 😂

Surely this can easily be resolved by your line manager (or whoever offered the expensed taxi) authorising the expense claim.

I'm sorry you're going through this, I can imagine this is additional stress that you don't need.

Good luck x

can you clarify a few things

firstly if this incident didn’t happen at work, how would you have got home and what would the cost have been?

secondly did your expenses claim go to the same manager who offered the taxi home? Was there a discussion at the time about cost and you saying it would be more cost effective to get a train? In my company expenses need to be explicitly approved in advance.

I had someone expense their tampons once 😂 do you mean that sort of expense everytime you leave the door?!

Surely they just reject the expense rather than jumping to accuse you of stealing? I'd have expensed it too, but then I expense everything the second I leave the house for work

They’re just doing due diligence and this wasn’t an approved expense; just say you now realise you should have asked permission. Let it go as surely you’d have needed to get home anyway and that’s usually at your own cost?
If they let you leave early they’ve given you time - you wouldn’t normally expect to benefit financially due to sickness / upset.

They offered the taxi and to pay for it because you were very upset - but you decided to go back using the train, which is your usual method of transport. So you were not upset enough to require immediate taxi transfer, therefore there was no need for them to pay your train fare because this was how you usually traveled. The fact that you could not use your normal ticket means that you should have agreed in advance that they would cover the cost of the ticket. Clearly, it would have been better for you to have taken the taxi if you were so upset that you needed to leave immediately. Hopefully they will now pay the 20 but you do need to understand their logic in order to get your own point across.

That’s just OPs interpretation of the conversation. She’s probably embarrassed and upset and took it in a way it was very unlikely to be intended

I think it’s dependent on why you were going home. If it’s illness then refusing a cab you were saying you were ok to make your own way. If it was something else, that was their doing and meant they wanted you to leave early because you were upset, then it’s fair enough to pay the train as your other option was to wait a few hours for your normal train. I think it’s just a misunderstanding. Explain and try not to worry.

Company expense policies are often very process driven so it's not the cost but the pricess that matters the most.

I got told not to approve again an expense which was basically one of the owners of the company paying an extra £5 on top of a £25 ticket instead of taking a £200/300 taxi. I should have made him pay the £5 personally even though his journey was £200 cheaper than the other option he was allowed to take.

But if someone submitted an expense that wasnt allowed, I would just reject it and say pay personally, there wouldn't be a big drama

They won’t authorise the expense. It was not a business expense so won’t be in policy. If you have someone willing to risk that, maybe. But not likely.

as others have said taxis will be paid by invoice against a purchases order. The Journeys will not be subject to the same scrutiny, scrutiny that would’ve fallen on the OPs manager anyway.

Now OP has taken responsibility for the expense and it’s outside of policy.

the best thing to do is apologise, say you misunderstood and move on. And next time- take the taxi!

I’m wondering how it’s stealing if you submitted a receipt for a refund? They can say no and give a reason. Maybe that would be wrong if they offered to pay, but to say stealing is quite scandalous

Yes but it seems that none of that was clear to the OP. She should talk to her manager and her manager should authorise the expense. She shouldn't find herself short by £20 because she tried to do what she thought was the right thing and save the company £80.