The company I work for reimburses consultants for their actual meal expenses incurred instead of using the government per diem rates. The company is not under any government regulation or contract to use either/or so this appears to be a pure business cost management decision.

Can anyone point to a case study or research that recommends which solution is the most cost effective?

My preference is to use per diem in order to reduce the administrative burden the consultants face by entering each meal as a line on their expense report combined with saving and submitting the receipts. It is my belief that the administrative costs of using meal actuals (saving receipts, individual meal entries on expense reports, submitting receipts, Finance reconciling receipts, invoicing, etc.) outweighs any intended savings than if per diem were used (I may be wrong). This seems hard to quantify.

Thank you!

Brandon W.