💳Expenses

This policy applies to all our employees that need to spend money on work-related activities/items. The idea of this policy is to keep it simple, rather than have a 3000 word that nobody can actually understand. Hence, if something isn’t clear, clarify it with Bailey before spending.

Everything should be charged to the appropriate Ramp card. Do not pay for it yourself and reimburse, unless you have approval from Bailey.

If reimbursement is needed, we will reimburse the mentioned business expenses, after they are approved, in part or in full, depending on their alignment with this policy.

Business trips

There are two categories of business trip:

• Job-related trip This type of trip is where you are told by leadership that you are required to travel for business purposes in relation to your job role. This is considered to be a part of your responsibilities, and it’s generally expected for you to attend.

• Optional trip This type of trip is where there is either an open offer posted in a group chat, or you’re directly invited by a member of leadership to join in with a trip. These are completely optional, and there is no pressure to join.

Pretty much everything when it comes to expense rules depends on which of the above two categories your trip falls under.

Allowed expenses

These two lists set out the things you’re allowed to expense based on the type of trip. For anything that’s not on this list, seek approval from Bailey before spending.

Job-related

• Accommodation, if not already arranged for you

• Legal document expenses, such as a visa

• Air, train, ship or other international transportation fares

• Local transportation during the trip

• Other minor or per diem expenses that have been approved by an employee’s manager (e.g. meals, business material)

Optional

• Accommodation, if not already arranged for you

• Air, train, ship or other international transportation fares

‘Cheapest viable option’ rule

All transportation fares, both international and local, are subject to the cheapest viable option rule. This just means using a common-sense approach of going for the cheapest option, unless it’s significantly worse.

For instance, if Joe wants to fly to New York, it’s cheaper to get to Toronto and just take the one flight from Toronto to New York rather than getting the connecting flight from his nearest city too. But to get to Toronto by bus would take 7 hours, so that’s unreasonable and hence it’s all good to expense the connecting flight direct from his city.

International transportation

When booking a flight, go to comparison sites (we recommend Skyscanner and Google Flights), and find the cheapest flight to get to your destination. Pick the first and cheapest option, not the airline you want to collect points with :)

We only allow expensing of economy (or whichever the most basic) class of travel is. None of those $30k Emirates flights where you get an entire room on the plane…

All tickets include some form of baggage allowance, such as a personal item, and that’s the extent of what we’ll cover, unless we’re requiring you to bring certain things that require extra baggage space.

You’re more than welcome to purchase additional upgrades and baggage as a separate transaction on your own card. Usually, you can just make the booking under the company card, then on the ‘manage booking’ page, upgrade and use your own card.

Local transportation

One of the most prominent examples of this is for local transport, where you should be using public transportation. We’re not going to allow expensing an $80 Uber ride when you could have taken the subway for $2.90, for instance.

Examples where it’s acceptable to go for Uber and other ridesharing apps:

• If you’re sharing the ride with other coworkers and it is cheaper to pool in one ride

• If you’re transporting company equipment where it’s not practical or safe to do so via public transportation

• If there’s a safety concern (please don’t ride the BART in SF at 2am)

• If public transportation will take significantly longer

Software

For any SaaS products that are relevant to the entire company, such as SendGrid or Vercel, please talk to Bailey and then use the “Company-wide SaaS” card in Bitwarden.

For software products that will be used individually, get approval from Bailey. Make sure the product is directly related to your job and yields a benefit in your performance. For instance if you’re a content writer, then Grammarly makes a lot of sense. But if you’re an engineer, you don’t need Grammarly - feel free to misspell all of your GitHub PR descriptions. Just kidding.

Workspace

The process here is different depending if you’re looking to get furniture or an actual laptop and IT equipment.

IT equipment

Here you can request equipment: https://forms.gle/qeLEKrtj2X1yTNaDA

If you already have a personal device or peripheral that you are willing to use please don't buy a duplicate through Cal.com.

If you require something which is not listed on the form, please contact [e-mail] and each request will be reviewed individually.

You are only eligible to request equipment if you are a full-time employee and have passed any probationary period (usually a few months after employment). We will place any requests made before this point on hold until you are deemed eligible.

Furniture

The workplace furniture stipend allows you to purchase a desk and a chair.

You can only expense fairly simple desks, not one of those huge multi-piece ones that has like 3 full filing cabinets attached to it.

Chairs are limited to a maximum price of $150. None of those fancy Herman Millers…

Basically, just go to IKEA and get something reasonable. There’s a Ramp card assigned to you for workplace furniture to use for this.

Education

You can expense things like courses and books that are directly related to your job or position at Cal.com, including future job positions you may be going for within the company. You can request the purchase of any of these by asking Bailey or Peer.

Uploading your documentation

Ramp makes it super easy to upload receipts and submit memos for each of your transactions.

For all transactions above $75 USD, you must upload an invoice.

For transactions under that limit, we require either an invoice or if it’s obvious by the statement descriptor what it’s for (e.g. Grammarly), then a detailed memo will suffice. If it says something like “Best Buy”, which could be any number of products, we’ll need a receipt.

If you’re just providing a note, you’ll need to explain precisely what it is, why it is relevant to the business and any further justification. This is important for demonstrating the expense and its necessity to the IRS.

Please note that invoices have to conform to legal standards and requirements and must have the company name and address printed on it. We can’t accept a piece of paper with “$20 for a bluetooth keyboard” handwritten on it.

Other (obvious) rules

Here’s a few things that may have been covered in sections above, but are just to outline some of the things it’s important to make clear.

You can’t expense:

• Anything incurred by spouses or other non-employees

• Unauthorised or unscheduled business meetings with clients, partners or job candidates

• Unauthorised/non-approved service upgrades (e.g. business class or hotel rooms)

• Personal services (beauty treatments etc.)

• Personal purchases (gifts, clothes, etc.)

• Lost personal property (e.g. luggage)

• Baggage oversize or overweight charges

• Fines or penalties

• Personal trips, including if you go and do something for personal enjoyment whilst on a business trip

Essentially, anything that you only have to pay for due to your own fault, for instance if you damaged a rental car and had to pay, that’s not expensable.

You need to:

• Document all expenses, including confirmations, receipts, invoices and anything that could be relevant.

• Provide a reason why that expense was necessary

  • For transportation, you should explain why you used that method of transportation

• Upload and submit all documentation relating to your expenses within 7 days after the transaction.

Audits and non-compliance

All transactions and reimbursements are regularly audited to make sure that we’re all in compliance with these rules. We take all of these rules very seriously, because every transaction that you make opens us up to liability with the IRS if the proper documentation isn’t in place.

Hence, if you’re found not to be in compliance with these rules, not uploading the correct stuff in good time or anything else mentioned here, we will cancel any cards immediately and restrict ability to make future purchases and reimbursements. I want to be focusing on building a billion dollar company, not navigating IRS audits and investigations :)