Daily Allowance and Per Diem Expense Category Fields

When you specify a daily allowance, you set a limit for the amount that you can expense for each day of the business trip. For example, you might have daily allowance of 125 USD for hotel expenses. When you enter the expense report, you specify the quantity (number of days) and the total amount of the expense, and the system determines whether you exceeded the daily allowance by dividing the amount of the expense by the number of days, and comparing that result with the daily allowance for the expense category. When the expense is associated with a fixed rate, such as the daily rate for a hotel or car rental service, you can use the daily allowance to ensure that a maximum amount is not exceeded.

If you incur expenses that are not associated with a fixed rate, such as meals, you can use the daily allowance in conjunction with a per diem expense category to establish an expense limit for multiple expense categories for the duration of the business trip. Instead of comparing the expense per day against a daily allowance, the system compares the total expense for the per diem expense category for the duration of the business trip against the total allowance for the duration of the business trip. For example, if the daily allowance for meals is 30 USD and you enter expenses for three days, the system compares the total entered for the expense categories that are set up with the per diem expense category for meals against the allowable amount for the business trip (90 USD).