Food. Lodging. Gas. These are normal -- and normally approved -- business expenses. Not Cher concert tickets, Christmas tree pajama bottoms and -- wait for it, boss -- sleeping pills.
Or are they? Well, to some brazen (or really clueless) employees they were, according to Certify’s 2014 T&E Expense Trends survey. The expense-management software company recently polled 60,000 business travelers about their business excursion spending over the last year and, boy, did some winners crop up in the bunch. The best part? Certify put their most bizarre findings together in an entertaining infographic for your viewing pleasure.
Related: 5 Simple Steps to Prevent Expense Fraud
Some of the most outlandish expenses divulged in the poll include a $25 mattress pad (for what, pray tell?), a $500 claim for hail damage to a car and a nearly $5,000 hyperbaric oxygen chamber (that probably left some poor accountant breathless). You know, all run of the mill biz expenses, right?
The real kicker here is that all of them were approved.
Related: 5 Secrets to Managing Your Business While Traveling
Worse than the ridiculous expenses themselves are the lame excuses people put forward for making them. One worker expensed $100 blown on “beers.” Why? “Liquid to maintain life in the tropics.” Completely understandable. Another purchased a hat because “Everyone else was getting one.” Watch out, boss. Don’t be surprised if an employee asks you to pay them back for splurging on a second computer monitor for this perfectly valid reason: “I have two eyes.”
For an eyeful of last year’s stupidest business expenses -- and for some giggles -- check out the tattle-taling infographic below:
Related: 4 Simple Steps to Keeping Every Dollar You've Earned in Your Pocket
Kim Lachance Shandrow
Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributo...
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