ExpenseBot's Travel meals & allowances flow is available to every country and role. It lives at Add Expense → Add Travel Expense → Travel meals & allowances. Everyone can record actual travel-meal spend. Employee reimbursement and incorporated-company profiles can also save their own daily or per-meal rate. If a team employer assigns a travel-meal policy, that policy is shown first and can cap reimbursement or provide a flat allowance. The flow shows the work mode, home country, and currency from General Settings, with a direct link to review them.
For team admins, open Team Management → Push Settings → Travel meal reimbursement. This is optional: publish a policy version, then assign it to the current team members who should use it. The Apply automatically to new team members option controls future assignments only; it does not prevent explicitly assigning the current team. Review any failed or skipped assignments. The full admin setup is in travel meal reimbursement policy.
A reimbursement cap limits the amount claimed through the travel-meal flow. A flat allowance supplies the configured claim amount. Neither declines a credit-card purchase, sets a bank spending limit, or automatically limits every restaurant receipt imported from Gmail. Leaving the policy unconfigured does not stop normal receipt tracking or card reconciliation.
The built-in GSA allowance calculator is offered only for supported US/USD business and reimbursement profiles. You enter your travel dates and US destination ZIP code; the app queries the GSA API to return the correct M&IE tier for that location ($68–$92/day CONUS; the GSA tiers are the same in FY2026 and FY2027). A foreign destination cannot use the CONUS calculator and should be recorded using the actual meal cost.
Qualifying UK employee-reimbursement profiles can use ExpenseBot's HMRC benchmark after confirming that the journey is qualifying business travel, not an ordinary commute, a meal cost was incurred, and evidence was retained. The journey duration and whether it continued past 8 p.m. determine the benchmark. This is not offered as a universal UK business-expense deduction.
First and last travel days automatically apply the IRS 75% rule (three-quarters of the daily rate per IRS Publication 463). Because those travel days use the flat 75% rate, ExpenseBot summarizes them instead of showing disabled meal controls. Full days between them show breakfast, lunch, and dinner checkboxes. Uncheck a full-day meal that was provided by a conference, client, or other host to deduct its GSA value.
The IRS 50% meal deduction limit is applied at report time on Schedule C line 24b — not to each individual day as you enter it. The preview shows both the gross M&IE claim and the net after-50% deduction so you can see the actual tax value of each trip.
Lodging is not available as a per diem for self-employed individuals. IRS Publication 463 requires actual lodging receipts. ExpenseBot handles lodging receipts as regular business expenses alongside the per diem meal claim in the same report.
Canadian and Australian users can record actual spend, use an employer policy, or save a reimbursement rate. ExpenseBot does not present CRA's specialized simplified methods or ATO reasonable-amount thresholds as universal allowances. A saved or employer-configured rate is labelled as such, and a flat allowance may be taxable depending on the circumstances.
Travel-meal entries are saved to your Google Sheets expense log with the trip date, destination context, category, method, source/version, original spend, and the calculated amount. When currencies differ, ExpenseBot preserves the historical conversion used for the calculation. The normal year-end tax report applies the relevant reporting treatment; the calculator itself does not determine tax eligibility.
See also: Per Diem Calculator — free standalone calculator to estimate your M&IE before a trip.