The Russian Expense Report

There are many things I find interesting about this place which I've included in the "Interesting observations" post but I thought that I should dedicate a special rant to the expense report.

I'll first begin with how my expense reports worked in the United States.

At the US Firm I had an American Express card. I used this card for all Firm expenses - if I had to book a flight, pay for a hotel, eat meals while out of town, take a client to lunch, bring in bagels or donuts for the team, etc. These purchases would then appear in my "buffer" which was located in my on-line expense reporting tools. I would allocate these costs to the correct projects and I would file away my receipts in case they were ever required. The only time I had to provide a receipt to our expense report department was for hotel bills (to make sure that we did not charge "movies" to clients) and also for out of pocket expenses exceeding $25. The Firm then paid Amex and everything was OK.

The Russian expense report (and "business trip" process) is completely another animal.

I do not have a credit card. We have a "cash advance" card which acts as a debit card. Before every trip we must determine how much money we think we will need and request approval from a manager or partner for approval. The money will then be loaded onto the card within a few days.

The flights are paid for by the Firm through our travel department - this is quite convenient, but the only convenient part about the flight. We are issued a "business trip" form which has some writing, stamps, and signatures from the Firm on it. We have to present this to the client and they put some stamps and signatures on the form as well. In addition to providing this with my expense report I must include my boarding passes, e-ticket receipt or paper ticket with the expense report when submitting. There is also a form which I must complete on my own acknowledging that I was to go on the business trip.

We do receive a per diem and this is adjusted depending on what city within Russia you are visiting. I'm quite thankful for the per diem because it would be a disaster to keep all of the receipts which are required in order to be reimbursed for an expense.

Hotels are also either paid for by the Firm or client for the most part, but if not this can be tricky to predict how much cash you will need. For some reason we are not required to turn in a receipt for the hotel if it's paid by someone else (my guess is that someone the hotel provides it directly to the Firm or the client as nothing happens without paper in Russia).

If we have a "social event" such as a team or client dinner an additional form must be prepared and have partner approval for the expense in order for the expense to be reimbursed.

In addition to all of these items, you actually have to fill out an expense report within our time and expense reporting system as well. This form is actually quite similar to the expense reporting system I used in the US and it works rather well.

I always keep copies of everything because a day or two after submitting an expense report (which is approved by partner, director, or manager depending on value) I will inevitably receive an email from the finance department that something is missing. Often I did forget to include something because there are so many things to pass along, but they are very diligent in their job in the expense department.