UK EXPENSES POLICY AVEVA will reimburse all reasonable costs associated with travel on Company business. The employee should adopt a prudent approach to claiming expenses and all claims must be supported by receipts whenever possible. Regular travelers will be issued with a corporate credit card. Most expenses should be charged to the employee s Corporate Credit card where they have one. Cash transactions should be limited and again supported with receipts whenever possible. Expenses claimed outside of this policy will need Executive Management authorization. Nominal amounts of currency are available on request via Concur for overseas visits. Any unused currency should be returned promptly to the Finance Office following your business trip. Corporate card statements will be received and settled by the Company, subject to the terms and conditions contained within the agreement that you are required to sign on issue of your corporate card. Statements will be issued to individuals for reconciling; any discrepancies or queries should be reported to the Travel Coordinator/Finance. Your corporate card should not be used to guarantee accommodation for a third party who is not an AVEVA employee. You should not purchase petrol, either overseas or in the UK, with your corporate card. The only exception to this is for hire cars used for company business. Claiming your expenses Expenses should be claimed on the Concur system. Un-receipted claims will only be paid where there is an acceptable reason. Please note credit card slips are NOT receipts, please only submit itemized receipts with your expenses claim. Expense claims should be submitted by the end of the month following the month in which they were incurred e.g. any expenses (HSBC or cash) incurred during the month of September should be claimed by 31 Oct. Failure to submit claims within this timescale may result in refusal of cash reimbursement and cancellation of your card. 1. Hotel accommodation All accommodation bookings should be made via the local travel coordinator as AVEVA has preferred hotels in many locations and usually this means preferential rates. UK and Overseas - Rooms should be up to Three Star/Moderate Rating (the rate should be kept to around 150 or lower in Cambridge and 100 or lower in Chesterfield or Manchester, although it is recognised that occasionally this rate will need to be exceeded if employees are visiting an expensive country/area). This rate should also include WIFI and parking and these should not be claimed as an additional costs. All overseas hotels should be booked via the Travel Coordinator so that corporate rates can be utilized.
2. Meals If staying in a hotel and eating breakfast or dinner as a resident then the Table D hôte rate or equivalent should apply. Rates for reasonable meal costs if you are not a hotel resident should be taken. Changing rates of currency and cost of living mean that there is no price policy for meal costs overseas. Employees are expected to exercise reasonableness in spending the Company s money on meals. Lunch can be claimed when travelling away from your normal place of work. No alcoholic drinks should be taken with lunch time meals while travelling on business The Company will reimburse half a bottle of wine (or equivalent) with the meal per person. Meal allowances for the UK are as follows: up to Breakfast 10.00 Lunch 12.00 Dinner 35.00 (including the half bottle of wine or equivalent) Snack 5.00 3. Per Diems and allowances Where the home country policy pays travelers a per diem rate then the traveler may be eligible to claim for meals and snacks depending on the rules of the per diem rate offered. If you are paid an overnight allowance this is usually treated as a disturbance allowance and is in addition to claims for meals etc. Disturbance Allowance When staying away from home overnight on company business employees may claim a standard tax-free allowance without receipts to cover incidental personal expenses such as newspapers, telephone calls and laundry, as follows: UK Overseas 5 per night 10 per night 4. Expenditure not Claimable the Company reserves the right to refuse payment of such claimed expenses. The employee should cover all other personal expenditure, for example, but not limited to, the following: Personal items Use of hotel video, health clubs etc. Non-business travel Laundry except for extended stays away from home Weekend entertainment Alcoholic drinks (in excess of the allowance with your dinner) Mini-bars (except water) Upgrades or changes to flights should not be made at the airport using corporate cards Pre book charges for seat reservations, extra leg room, speedy boarding, lounge access & fast track Any fines incurred whilst on company business, e.g. for parking, speeding, travelling without a valid ticket, are payable by the employee. 5. Business Telephone Calls
International calls to and from a mobile phone are extremely expensive and costs are incurred at either end of the connection. All effort must be made to use cisco whenever appropriate through the hotel or from the AVEVA office you may be visiting. Usually, if an employee is required to make business calls, a company mobile phone will be provided. If this is not the case, the cost of business calls only can be claimed, and must be supported by an itemized bill. In accordance with UK tax legislation, the line rental cannot be claimed, nor can calls made on a Pay as You Go mobile where business calls cannot be separately identified. 6. Entertaining Entertaining of any kind should be agreed with your Manager in advance. In all cases receipts and justifications must support claims. Whether entertaining clients or staff you must clearly state names of persons included and for clients the name/s of the company/ies, and the purpose of the entertainment. AVEVA Subsidiaries Apart from members of the Executive Team, AVEVA staff must not incur costs paying for meals and drinks for employees of other AVEVA companies and then claim back under business entertaining. Separate bills should be obtained wherever possible. It is important that we keep the costs of subsidiaries separate for accounting purposes.
Appendix Business Travel, Subsistence and Accommodation Overview The tax status of employee business travel expenses is as follows: Travel between home and a permanent workplace not allowable Travel between home and a temporary workplace allowable Travel between workplaces (permanent or temporary) - allowable The tax status of subsistence and accommodation expenses usually follows that of the associated travel. If the travel is tax-allowable, any reasonable subsistence and accommodation expenses necessarily incurred by the journey are likely to be equally deductible. Permanent workplace A permanent workplace is somewhere the employee attends on a regular basis to perform routine duties. In most cases this will be the individual s recognised base, but it could be anywhere he/she carries out routine tasks. A permanent workplace does not have to be the on the employer s premises (see below regarding use of the home as a workplace). An employee can have any number of permanent workplaces, depending on the locations he attends in the performance of routine duties. Temporary workplace A temporary workplace is somewhere an employee attends to perform non-routine, self-contained assignments such as an external training course, a meeting at a client s premises or a visit to a branch office. A temporary workplace can become a permanent workplace if the pattern of attendance becomes routine over a period of time, or if the 40% rule is breached (see below). 40% Rule A temporary workplace might become a permanent workplace if the employee s visits there, whether for specific or routine duties exceed 40% of his working time. This rule has no basis in law but has become established HMRC practice. There is no designated period over which the 40% average should be measured, although a common sense approach would be to identify for analysis any period during which the individual s working practices show a recognised pattern. HMRC will not allow a tax deduction for travel between workplaces where one location is visited enroute to another simply to convert a private journey into a business journey. For example if an employee has two permanent workplaces, one close to his home and the other more distant (so that a journey between the two is tax deductible but a journey directly from home to either is not) he might visit the first location on his way to the second in order to obtain a tax deduction for the subsequent travel between locations. He would only qualify for a deduction if he visited the first location for a genuine business reason, rather than simply to obtain tax relief.
24 month rule If an employer requires an employee to work away from his normal workplace at a location that is not a reasonable commuting distance from home, tax relief will be available for the full cost of commuting together with reasonable accommodation and subsistence expenses, provided the secondment is not expected to last more than 24 months. If it is known from the outset that it will last more 24 months, no tax relief is due. If it is expected at the outset to last less than 24 months but circumstances subsequently change to extend the period beyond 24 months, tax relief will be denied from the date it is known that the assignment will exceed 24 months. Home as a permanent workplace If an employee s home is a permanent workplace, travel from home to other temporary workplaces will be allowable but travel from home to a permanent workplace will not. HMRC will only accept that an employee s home is a permanent workplace if it is a truly objective requirement of the employment that he should work there, rather than simply personal choice or convenience. HMRC s definition of objective requirement is that the choice of home as a workplace is dictated by the requirements of the job, rather than those of the individual. If, for example, it is easier for an employee to work from home because he chooses to live an unreasonable commuting distance from work, that would be a matter of personal choice and not an objective requirement of the job. A simple test is to consider whether any other employee doing the same job would also be required to work from home. In practice there are few employees for whom home is a permanent workplace. If this is the case it will have been agreed in writing between the employee, their line manager and HR. Travelling appointments HMRC recognise that some employees may have no permanent workplace but a series of temporary workplaces they visit for non-routine duties, such as a travelling salesman who visits a number of clients in the course of a working day. Such a person might have no permanent workplace. Consequently all business travel is likely to qualify for tax relief as there will be no home to permanent workplace travel. Conversely, the same individual might argue that his entire sales region is one extended permanent workplace. Again all business travel is likely to qualify for tax relief as there will be no home to permanent workplace journeys, provided his home is situated within the designated area. Otherwise, travel from home to the recognised border of the designated area would be disallowed for tax as home to permanent workplace travel.