Per diems (also known as daily allowances or lump sums) are amounts paid to employees traveling on behalf of the company, instead of actual expenses. Per diems tend to be paid either due to legal requirements in some countries and/or by company preference.

The calculation of per diem amounts varies from country to country. Hence, the deduction amount and logic used must change accordingly.

Per diems are used to reimburse employees for their trip without paying for the meals during that same trip. If the employees are paid meals or need to pay for meals for themselves and other guests such as business attendees, the per diem amount is usually reduced for that day.

On exceptions, per diems can also be used to track “reimbursable allowances”. In this case per diems are used to calculate the reimbursable amount for the trip, but with the sole purpose of calculating a limit for the actual expenses that employee claim. Employees need to submit actual expenses and are only reimbursed up to the amount of the per diem calculation for that day.

Perk takes into consideration time-zone differences when calculating per diems and assigning rates. Perk offers a comprehensive setup for managing per diems depending on the customer’s requirements.

Per diems within trip expenses

This involves specific business logic to calculate per diems based on date, time, and location/country. 
For this reason, these per diems are usually created automatically as part of a trip. The business logic used depends on the per diem type, as well as other settings such as the day definition, day fraction, etc.

Individual per diems (without trips)

Manual per diem allowance: this is a fixed rate calculation based on full day.

Perk only tracks:

• single expense country
• date of the claim

Per diem claims are created manually as a separate report. You can use a single date or a range of dates. The applicability of the per diem rate can be determined as per single day, days, or nights.

It usually uses Perk’s default per diem rate type, since it doesn’t track location changes or times.

Tip: For more information on how to create a per diem manually without a trip, see Submit a per diem expense report.