Friend using Cashback websites for work purchase

[Awebby1985]

Hi, long time lurker on MN but first time poster! Met a friend for lunch on Saturday a whilst chatting about work, my friend mentioned to me that as her work as a PA/assistant she frequently makes hotel/travel bookings for her team of around 30 people and said that when making these bookings always uses her personal online cashback account/website to make the bookings and makes around £200 a month from this.

So my question is, is my friend doing anything wrong? She is not stealing anything from the company as the travel would still need to be booked regardless?

Would be a disciplinary offence where I work. We can’t accumulate air miles for personal use either. We spend public money, so have to be cleaner than clean.

We can claim the points/airmiles when booking own travel but this is different because it's not her own travel. On points/ cashback I'd only expect to get them if I was booking on my own card. It sounds like she's using the company credit card and then claiming the cashback for herself. I don't think there are many employers who would find that acceptable unless she was being completely up front and has it agreed.

In the majority of established companies, this would be classed as a conflict of interests-fraud. If you feels you can’t ask the question to your employer then you know the answer. It’s rocky ground

t would be a sackable offence even at my quite flexible employer - we are allowed to use hotel reward cards, frequent flyer cards etc, but only AFTER rhe booking decisions has been made by somebody else. i.e. we are not allowed to make the decision where we book with the card in mind, but can benefit once its made. and the benefit has to go to the person travelling, not the one booking!

My advice to all staff about these 'grey' areas is "how would this look, explaining this to your bosses boss".

If the rationale still works then go ahead, if it begins to unravel a bit, then it is probably a little suspect.

So, in my (non public sector) experience, nectar points would be one thing, cash back websites to make purchases from would be totally different.

It’s wring because the company is paying more for the product than its costing. If it’s £100 and she gets £10 cash back, then it’s actually cost £90. But the company still pay £100.

pianotuner

That’s not how cash back sites work

You won’t be able to find the product for £90 cash, you’re just splitting the referral bonus that the company is offering

Eg if you went to a hotel website directly, they would charge you £100
If you clicked on an ad on MN which took you to the site, they would charge you £100 but give MN £10 as a thank you for sending you
If you click on a link on a cashback site, they would charge you £100 and give the cashback site £10 as a thank you for sending you
The cashback site then gives you £5 of that

Either way, it costs the company £100, and the same hotel company name appears on your bank statement

Seems dodgy
Pretty sure your friend would be sacked for this where I work

Is it a small company OP? I ask as the last two places I have worked had a dedicated travel provider that you had to use.

we had 3 guys in our procurement department do this. They managed to pay for a trip to Vegas out of their proceeds. They were fired! Totally unethical.
I think you could only justify it if you were only earning off the back of your personal work expenses...not everyone else as well

@PianoTuner567 no that’s not how it works. The product costs the same either way.

I wouldn't think twice about collecting air miles, points etc if I'm paying on my own card and claiming it back. I see it as the small upside to having to wait to be reimbursed for work expenses - it's their cheapskate policies not letting us have a company card and making us be out of pocket for the couple of weeks it takes the claim to come through.

Obviously using a more expensive supplier so as you gain more points or whatever would be unethical. And if the company had a loyalty membership of it's own I would use that instead. But if not, meh.

" if a company is worried about 45 quid, they have bigger issues than someone getting cashback."

You mean if it only happened once?

But it didn't.

What's a "kickback?

@RainbowMum11

I'm afraid you are very wrong, it isn't a taxable benefit, and I'm not aware of any cases of HMRC investigating people for benefiting from loyalty schemes, whether they pay out points, gift cards or cash

www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-income-manual/eim21618

If the company hasn't and doesn't wish to sign up to cashback sites, she isn't using more expensive companies simply to get the benefit of the cash back site and the job is still getting done then I see no issue at all with it. My DSis has amazon prime paid for her because she orders for work a lot on the company card and they told her to get the prime on her personal account so they both benefit.

It's a conflict of interest because they are getting a cash incentive for using a booking website when it could for example, potentially be cheaper to book direct with the hotel.

Booking websites charge a base commission to hotels, usually 15% but this can be as high as 25% if the hotel wants to be featured, rank higher in the search results, etc.

Which is why many hotels will often give you a better rate and/ or other benefits (room upgrade, free breakfast, etc) if you book direct, particularly if you phone them and ask them and even more so if they think you will be a regular business customer rather than just a one off holiday stay.

It's also why some hotels will not list their rooms on booking sites unless they have late availability/ excess inventory.

All these extra costs need to be factored into the pricing, so even though booking sites boast about not charging the customer any fees, in reality you are still paying these costs.

If you are booking travel for a company, surely you are expected to get the best deal for the company and having an option which gives you a percentage of the sale in cash, without the company knowing this is a clear conflict of interest.

I work for a Charity and benefitting personally in any way whatsoever from a company transaction is seen as a conflict of interest.
Against our Financial Policy and Practice so potentially Gross Misconduct.

@PianoTuner567 no that’s not how it works. The product costs the same either way.

Yeah, the cost of the product is £100 but if you get £10 cashback then the net cost to you overall is £90.

So the company is paying £100 for something that they could have got for £90, except the employee has pocketed the difference.

But you can’t sign up to cashback websites as a company, only as an individual

So the company isn’t missing out because the company can’t utilise the cashback offer.

So if the company is going to pay £100 regardless, what could the person be doing wrong by using a cashback website?

I get the possible conflict of interest point, but the vast majority of companies don’t expect their assistants to do an exhaustive trawl of price sites before booking a night at a hotel, and it’s pretty normal for most travel bookers to default to always using one particular site, especially if it links to Concur etc
So using that site via Quidco or similar isn’t going to be any different to using that site without Quidco in terms of the cost to the company

Other than MN has an obsession with finding crime and wrongdoing in everything

I wouldn't be comfortable with this. The question for me is whether the OP's friend would be happy to tell her boss what she was doing. If so, she should do so and check that they are relaxed about it. If not, that's a good sign that she knows she is doing something wrong.

Regarding tax, my understanding is that cashback is exempt because it's regarded not as income but as a discount on your purchases, albeit a delayed one. Probably also because for most people, being their own purchases, the average amount is fairly small. But that's your own purchases for your own use or as gifts, I doubt that the exemption is intended to cover purchases made by a company and which you then benefit from, especially if the company is unaware of this.

If someone was getting £250 a month from cashback this way, that's £3000 a year, which to most people is quite a lot of money.

If doing this is perfectly okay, then why has the person concerned not informed their employer about it? As several pp have said, personally benefiting from company purchases in this way would be a disciplinary matter or worse with their employees, possibly even grounds for dismissal with some, so clearly it is a potential issue...

I am surprised the cashback sites pay out. Travel not in her name yet they give her money each month? I don't think that is right at all as they would refuse to give her the money?

Excellent! I wish other people would be more enterprising (then perhaps they wouldn't be moaning about people who are financially better off).

Doesn't sound like anything illegal to me, she's just making the most of an opportunity.

If I employed someone who did this l’d be impressed by their initiative and enterprise. The company pays the same price so there’s no loser.

If I had someone working for me who did this (I wouldn't) I'd consider how it helps staff morale and turnover.

Let's suppose you have four people on £30,000 doing work of equal value in the same office.

one skims off an extra £5k a year in kickbacks.

The others work equally hard and are equally dedicated.

What should I be paying them?

What happens when I want to switch staff around, or share out the work that beings in bribes and sweeteners?

What happens if we move to a different supplier that doesn't pay inducements?

What happens if the woman on the till scoops out £20 every week by manipulating the prices and bringing in home-made sandwiches?

What happens if the stationery stores are crammed to the rafters with out-of-date printer cartridges because the supplier was offering a free holiday?