Sub Specialty Contractor

We have crews that travel throughout the country. We provide a per diem payment ahead of the job for the number of days the employee is expected to be on the job. One of the issues that we run into is that the job is shorter than we originally expected (ex. expected to last 5 days but only lasted 3) so we have to collect the over payment of the per diem funds. This creates a reconciliation and logistics mess since they don't always get back to the office right away.

How does people handle this if you pre-pay your per diem payments? Have you found a process to help make this simpler on the employees and the accounting team? I'm also curious on how you pay out the per diems - AP, payroll, cash, other?

Thanks!

Thias

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Thias Shefchik
Controller
Suburban Enterprises, Inc.
Appleton WI
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we have crews that regularly travel out of town and we pay per diems as well. 

We pay per diems by AP check for the days we expect them to be out of town. If that ends up being shorter than expected, we just deduct the day(s) not worked out of town as expected from the next per diem check. If someone quits and they were overpaid for per diem, we deduct it from their last paycheck. 

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Bryan Daniel
VP of Finance
AR Daniel Construction
Cedar Hill TX
(972) 291-3304
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We also have crews traveling all over the USA.  

We pay per diem on a weekly basis as an expense reimbursement through payroll.   We have a daily per diem rate and that is what is paid to the employee on a weekly basis.   It is up to the employee to book their own hotels.  Works out well for us.  We typically pay $120 per day to the field crew and $135 per day to the Superintendents.  This amount can change if job is in cities where hotels are simply more expensive.   Employees typically book for weekly rates, and we also have a nationwide account with Extended Stay Hotels who offer our employees discounted rates if committed to stay for over a month.   

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Debbie Ortega
Controller
SubZero Constructors Inc
Rancho Santa Margarita CA
(949) 216-9503
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