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Comment by davio | Hacker News Reader

There was the old "raincoat expense report" urban legend back when I was in Big 4.

Consultant left raincoat on subway while traveling for business and ran replacement cost through on expense report. Admin rejected the expense.

Consultant submitted second expense report with exact same total without the raincoat expense line item and the cost just absorbed into the other untraceable per diem and incidental categories. "Find the raincoat now" as a comment.

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Similar experience at an employer where I was grateful to be travelling on their dime.

Took the bus and metro home from the airport - $3 claim rejected because I didn’t get a transfer as proof (which wasn’t needed to ride on this trip).

Yet if I drove, I could have claimed 50 cents a km or something, no proof required.

Interesting story. :)

I think businesses can he really hard on fraud without being hard on what constitutes a valid expense.

I wonder how expensive that raincoat was that the person thought it needed to be its own line item on the expense. That's normally what the incidental expenses line is for, so this is just a story of someone who filled out his expense report incorrectly, got it rejected, and then filled it out correctly.

A good raincoat is pretty expensive. At least $200. So the guy submits an expense report with a $200 line item, gets rejected and splits the $200 into probably 7 or 8 incidentals which usually have a $25 limit, probably on different expense reports.

I'd take a double take at a $200 line item for an emergency raincoat to replace one that I lost on a trip. I'm not asking the guy to get a plastic poncho for his business meeting, but he doesn't need to get it at the Gucchi store.

Reminds me of a time I worked in a company that reimbursed us for coffee expenses on business travels. In their system, I had to itemize every receipt, so my expense report ended up being 50% made of morning espressos. The secretary handling expenses came back to me pretty annoyed and told me that next time, I should buy a pre-paid Starbucks card instead.

I've heard about "hide the hat" years ago––you lose your hat on a business trip and have to find some other way to expense it.

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