To have claimed this as an expense?

[Wealthabd]

Something happened at work and I was very upset, manager told me to go home and would I like the company to book a taxi for me. It’s a long journey home and it could be anywhere from 1.5-2 hours drive and probably cost around £100.

I felt uncomfortable at the cost (even though the company were paying) and so I got the train, they know I’m struggling financially and the extra £20 I had to pay (my original ticket was for a set time) is actually a big cost to me. I’ve raised the ticket as an expense, fully open about what it was when raising it.

Now the company have acted like I’ve tried to steal from them. I really didn’t think I’d done anything wrong (ans it was 80% cheaper than the taxi) and I feel it could have been resolved with one conversation but they’ve now got senior management involved.

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

So you usually get a train home?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Next time just take the flipping taxi!

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.

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

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.

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

I cant for the life of me understand why you didn't get in the taxi.

Do you normally take the train? So they were offering a taxi in the moment only. But you said no and took your normal mode of transport home, so they don’t see why they would pay for your normal commute? That at least would make a semblance of sense, and I agree - I wouldn’t expect to pay expenses to someone for their normal commute, totally different from paying for a taxi because an employee is hurt or upset. I hope you are ok btw,

I would just use this as a learning exercise. Lots of companies have a specific policy, and if you try and use your common sense to save the company money, it doesn’t fit the policy so the answer is no.

Where I work if you have to go to a medical appointment, you can have all of the travel and time of the medical appointment off For free. Various times I’ve tried to save the company money by working from the office closest to the hospital I was attending. However, I realised that all I was doing is making it more difficult for myself to travel during peak times, and no one actually cared for my altruism.

That was a lesson learned for me.

Have they approved the expense previously and are now questioning it??

Or are they refusing the expense now. Because my company often refuse expenses. It doesn’t mean I’m a thief and will lose my job! They simply haven’t agreed to a request which can be discussed if appropriate.

Are you in a union?

Because not everyone is used to the frankly ridiculous sums of money some companies will happily spunk up the wall on things and put on expenses. Their natural inclination is to think 'oh no, thats far too expensive' and of course, if you also don't realise the company has an account with a firm and probably pays less than you would as a private individual, it feels even more crazy.

The company I work for -and I am a sub-contractor not an employee - would have happily paid for me to stay in a £200 a night hotel for two nights.. 5 minutes from my home! Purely because thats the expectation and process for them for sub-contractors attending hotel based all day meetings. As it was, they covered two lunches, two dinners and my normal hourly rate for the whole time I was there!

I am used to just submitting my invoice for my hours, occasionally doing more hours than expected if I have covered for someone else, so this is way beyond what my brain thinks is normal - but it is normal for multimillion/billion pound mega-companies (a tiny subsidary of which I actually work for).

That said, if I included an expense for something out of the norm without running it past my immediate boss first, I would fully expect them to ask for an explanation!

This

"Obviously the corporate world just doesn't work like that at all, and you need to get into the mindset of complying with policy rather than worrying about saving some faceless entity money. But it doesn't come naturally to all of us."

To give another example. I've been pressurised to take a cheaper flight at a stupid time so it costs less, but as it's anti-social hours a taxi is allowed to go to the airport bringing the overall cost higher than a flight at a sensible time. It's not so much about overall costs, but ticking some budget box.

OP needed to go home early.

The usual route and means cost more because it was early. So work pay. But she should have run this by someone first, yes.

She said she takes the train at a certain time and this particular time cost extra. It would be good if OP could clarify, but this was in her first post.

It looks like they 'sent' her home early.

An I missed that bit. Yes agree. I think this must be a mis-understanding. Hopefully easily cleared up.

She explained in her first post that the taxi was 100 pounds and she thought that was excessive.