I should take benefit of this anonymous forum instead of asking this emabarassing question to my manager.Can we claim travel expenses (train travel card) if client is london based. I know that there is rule of (home to client ) - (home to ACN office), but want to know whether anyone practically bothers to claim these expenses or whether it is professional to ask this ?It's about £160 per month which is significant amount for me.I am C3.

Officially the policy is you can't claim if the client is within zone 1 or 2. In practise - never been an issue for me - so don't know

So if its the policy not to but easy to claim in practice - then does this mean it all comes down to the approver? I may have to pay close to £300 a month if its a London client and def want to claim it!!!

Why don't you just ask your HR function. It is a perfectly reasonable request and I imagine they have heard it a million times before.

OP, where are you based? MKH or London?

Read the policy. That's what it's there for. And no you can't claim it back if your normal office is London. For one, why should the client pay for your normal commute in to work. For another, I think a company reimbursing you for your normal commute to work would be deemed a benefit, and therefore would be taxable. Is Accenture paying C3s so badly you can't afford to pay for your commute?

Season ticket prices for a person staying at Reading comes to £400 to £500 a month - paid well or not, its a decent sum spent on travel which can be utilized elsewhere.Last I heard, on this forum, C2s and C3s have been offered quite lowly packages lately...

if you choose to live in reading when your home office is in london then that is down to you i am afraid.

Yeah, it's sods like you who clog up the national travel infrastructure and make commuting an crowded nightmare, what with your lengthy and regular journeys. And imagine the size of your carbon footprint! Any socially responsible company should in fact consider a ban on employing anyone who doesn't live within say 50 miles of the office.

Nice discussion going on here and this question seems to pop up everywhere.Dave - you are right in that people stay far out to commute to work however with ACN where its London based with a lot of work outside of london around the M4, it's ACN who actually makes their guys travel to work.If an employee lives in London but has to travel to Maidenhead 4 days a week and return home then its literally the same thing!!!Aces

I've no clue what that last post meant

i agree - Aces, what is your point

Post referred to Dave's rant about those clogging up the network staying too far away from their home location ie London rather than in London when the truth is location's irrelevant with ACN as most work in and outside the London area based on client locations.Example - within CHT if you end up working in Newbury and travelling 1.5hrs by train, it's better for the employee to live in Slough/Reading rather in London and actually clogging the travel infra.So this clogging happens in both cases and makes no difference if one lives inside the City or outside :-)Aces

couldn't ACN invest in accommodation pods for its employees, maybe based on Portaloos? - these could be distributed around the country based on a logistical forecasting algorithm (preferably developed by Oliver Wyman, not ACN..) to minimise the consultant commuting burden on a grateful nation's infrastructure

wow, where to start?OP: "home office" is your closest geographical office, obviously, so if accenture (or any other firm) chooses to hire someone then that person should not expect the firm to pay for their commute to the home office unless it was agreed in the employment contract. If you do claim it and aren't caught, fine, but... why risk it? Seriously, for train money you'd risk getting disciplined? There are other ways to fiddle expenses you know...Anons: client travel policies vary. as it happens on my client we negotiated the option to stay in hotels if the commute exceeds 90 minutes door to door, even though it's London based. Hint: I'm not in FS or public services, who would probably spit their champagne in your face laughing for suggesting such a thing.Dave: LOL, my carbon footprint is probably the size of bigfoot's by now! Yes we clog up the trains but who would you rather be nose-to-armpit with - a sweet-smelling consultant, a dodgy student, or a "horizontally-gifted" American tourist?

Someguy,The OP's question was - 'Can I claim travel expenses if the Client is London Based as well?'So while the Home Office is London based which you visit once in a week or two, what about daily travel costs because it's the client that is London based forcing daily commute into City

my mistake - in which case see my response re. client travel policies. absolutely fine to ask your manager / lead this on day one - saves a lot of second guessing.

Given the trillions they are no doubt spending on ACN, I doubt they will even notice your expenses. ACN clients presumably aren't very price-sensitive?

you cannot claim any travel expenses within zones 1 and 2 if you are based at a london office.if you were commuting from london out to a client that was outside zone 2, you can only claim the delta between the costs.if you live outside zone two, are based at a london office and have to work on a london based client, i strongly doubt they would pay any travel expenses. check with HR tho.