claiming back expenses

[Elasticwoman]

If you incur travel and incidental expenses on works business, how long after you submit the claim does it usually take your employer to honour it?

I have just had an expenses claim paid today, 2 weeks after submitting the claim, and 1 week after being told the claim had been passed and the cheque was being raised. In the end I was paid cash because I made a fuss.

depends

2 weeks sounds fine imo

most companies have a policy for this

I tend to run payments every second Friday so expenses normally end up getting paid once a month. I won't do them more often than that.

If they had a policy and let me know what it was, I wouldn't have minded waiting. They didn't tell me when to expect it, and then when I spoke to some one with the authority to pay it, he started quizzing me about items on it which I had been told before I went were allowable expenses.

that's accounts departments for you!

yup, they should have told you how long it would take to pay. You'll probably find they only run payments on set days.

And also, they will have the final say as to what gets paid - i.e. can query what's on there (usually).

The questions were probably to get it straight in his mind so that when he is asked questions by his boss, he knows what it is. It's their responsibility to account for every penny and make sure it was all authorised and accurate.

Depends at what point in the month the expenses are submitted. If I time it right, they get paid within a week or two but if not it will be in the following month.

I think its pretty standard for most companies only to process expenses once or twice a month.

My place has a 10 day turnaround, after receipt of the claim.

Sounds like my place! I went on a course on the 23rd april, put a claims form in 28th I think and finally got paid on wednesday in cash after I asked if they had sent it to my bank account.

We do expenses with the pay, so once a month.

Thanks for these comments ladies. As I work for the company concerned only on an ad hoc basis through an agency, I don't have the faith in it that I would if I worked for it directly.

Your timescale sounds OK to me. We pay expenses through payroll so you submit by 20th of the month and get paid with salary on 27th. At a previous company, anyone with a company credit card was responsible for paying it themselves but the payment date was set by the company so that you had ample time between incurring any expense and receiving the money for it from accounts. Therefore if you racked up interest charges it was your own fault!