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Expenses: Personal, Business or Both? |
Ethical Mayhem in Traveling With the Family
Expenses: Personal, Business or Both? |
Sometimes [the lieutenant governor] takes his family along on business trips.
When asked how he distinguishes between a business trip on which he takes his family,
or a family trip around which he arranges business meetings, [he] smiled and nodded.
Source: An actual account in Feb 2008
Owners and executives often extend business trips into vacation and vice versa. It's a common practice and a common ethics issue. While the two birds with one stone adage is an easy way out in trying to balance our hectic lives and weigh travel costs by combining or extending travel, it creates an auditing quagmire.
How does one distinguish between the two: a business trip with family and a family trip with business meetings?
The best solution? Here are 4 Tips to Keep Personal and Business Expenses Clean:- Be able to segregate entire days of business from days of pleasure if possible.
- Separate family member travel, meals, etc. from your business expenses.
- Whenever possible, avoid using cash while traveling, it's more difficult to audit.
- And the simplest, use two distinct credit cards for business and personal. Retailers, hoteliers, restaurateurs are all familiar with the circumstances.
And IF your CFO, Accountant, or financial adviser has a standard policy or guidelines, get them, read them, and follow them in order to avoid personal, family, or professional embarrassment.
As a closing thought: Forget rationalizations and justifications, IF you have any doubts whether an expense can be misconstrued, err on the side of caution -and common sense.
A common question for ethical decision making and conduct: would you be able to defend it if it appeared on the front page of your hometown newspaper? Given politicians' and high profile CEO's expenses and lifestyle scrutiny, they often have to do just that.
Follow these simple rules. Why fuel the fire with sloppy practices? |
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This article may be reprinted with expressed written consent
from Vince Crew. Vince operates
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and adviser who works with business owners and executives
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