Are they using PTO? Especially if yes, I would have no problem paying for their Wi-Fi to work. They are already spending their resource (pto) that day so I wouldnt want to double charge them.
If not PTO I think you could go either way. Personally if the company can afford it i would rather be generous.
I'm on the opposite side. But I also record my work/billable hours. I had an issue with a client once that necessitated I end up working about half a day on a day I was taking planned PTO. My schedule was adjusted to basically give me back half a day of PTO (we can take in 1/2 day increments) and if I needed to pay for wifi to complete that work, I would expect to be reimbursed for that as well.
I haven’t seen $8 WiFi in quite awhile. United regularly charges $25+ for a cross-country flight.
ETA: The cheapest receipt I found in my inbox was $16.99 for a four-hour flight. I’ve paid as much as $36.99 for an international flight.
Southwest is $8 and you get it all day (works on connections).
Ah. I don’t fly them anymore since they cut most of their operations out of SFO. I just wanted to make the point that we shouldn’t assume this is a small expense.
I haven’t seen $8 WiFi in quite awhile. United regularly charges $25+ for a cross-country flight.
ETA: The cheapest receipt I found in my inbox was $16.99 for a four-hour flight. I’ve paid as much as $36.99 for an international flight.
$25?!?!?!?!?! Holy shit.
I can't remember the last time I went somewhere for work and couldn't fly Southwest or JetBlue.
Still, if employees are expected to work on a flight, you gotta pay their wifi. And I can't imagine not being expected to work on a work flight, unless it's like at 8 at night or something.
If you don't care if they spend the flight reading trashy novels and watching the in flight entertainment, then I'm less bothered.
I work for a large corporation and I'm relatively certain they wouldn't approve this expense. Even when I traveled every week, all week. They are cheap and also probably just have to draw the line to avoid people taking advantage to watch a movie on the plane or something like that.
Still, I agree with pps, if you have the opportunity, this expense should be approved. Even if it is $40, that's still a small price to pay for the work that employee is probably generating on their PTO.
Post by lilypad1126 on Nov 18, 2019 14:14:10 GMT -5
It would never occur to me that this shouldn't be reimbursed as a work expense (assuming you bought the wifi to work). I don't care if my employees don't work on the airplane/in the airport (on a work trip), but if they need/want to, and regardless if it's a work trip or not, they can absolutely buy the wifi and be reimbursed.
H works for a relatively small company (<750 employees) and travels. He said he expenses in-flight WiFi. I asked him about doing it on a vacation day with a proposal or contract looming, and he said it would be approved.
Post by wanderingback on Nov 18, 2019 20:22:19 GMT -5
Also this is timely because currently my work is fighting me on reimbursing me for a conference that I went to, so a total of over $1000. They need more proof that I actually attended even though I submitted proof. So yeah, there's no way they'd reimburse me for using wifi on the plane unless it was pre-approved by I'm sure 5 other higher ups!
Time spent on work is charged, so technically you wouldn’t be charging 8 hours of PTO that day. The WiFi itself wouldn’t be reimbursed if it isn’t a work trip.
Post by hbomdiggity on Nov 18, 2019 23:41:35 GMT -5
I only fly one airline so I pay the monthly connection fee that is $50. My firm even reimbursed that.
My current company would probably reimburse the per flight fee, not sure about the monthly fee. But I have less expectation of being connected in the air now and taking advantage.