Employers making employees pay...

[MovingIn07]

go to the top,get together with your co workers who are also in HK and working from home and jointly sign a letter which address the difficulties you are all facing,the CFO OR Corporate controller is the one who eventually have to come up with a formal procedure if your company is expanding overseas.
dont waste your time with green eyeshade staff .

I tend to agree with the sentiment of this (if not with the characterisation of the green eyeshade staff!)

[alright]

it's actually a little bit of everything:

1) they've got a set system and don't want to design something new that fits Asia's situation...just like their pricing structure - which is way over-priced for Asia - way out of market prices...I constantly need to "break the rules" in order to win projects - then have to explain to my COO who approved these on a "case by case basis" although what we are doing is pretty much on an "all cases for Asia office basis"...despite this, they still design a new pricing structure for Asia!

2) their accounts department sucks! I'm constantly bugged with their emails requesting how many % my work has been finished so they can do whatever they want to do with their accounts system...and emails asking me to chase clients for payment while indeed my clients have paid already (so I forwarded them our old email correspondence and they just said, "Oh yes, they have paid....please ignore my email") - as if I'm not busy enough!

3) they are late for other payments as well - and I'm bugged by my vendors for this

4) CFO never replies anyone's emails...even my boss can't seem to get hold of him...

5) we have a sense that our boss - though foreign-born Chinese but can't understand where he gets his Chinese mentality from - doesn't like us jumping the gun...so out of "respect", gathering together and writing a petition letter to CFO is out of the question

I have, however, notified my accounts office that I will be limiting my expenses to HK$XXXX each month because I need to pay my own bill too UNLESS they pay me back my expenses within 30 days...they say they'll look into this...but until I start refusing to do certain work that will incur expenses over the said-amount, they won't care...

I guess this is just one, out of many, situation that I just have to suck it up! Well, this is life....

[MovingIn07]

That sounds SO like our company! While it might not help, at least you know you are not alone (particurly the point about being bugged for % complete and payments who have already paid etc. etc.....)

Keep strong. It gets better. At least we get our expenses paid now....

[hullexile]

That sounds SO like our company! While it might not help, at least you know you are not alone (particurly the point about being bugged for % complete and payments who have already paid etc. etc.....)

Keep strong. It gets better. At least we get our expenses paid now....

Yes I am afraid it is typical of large organisations when they internationalise. We have refused to give our UK base the correspondence address of our students to stop them sending stupid letters such as how Hong Kong students can apply to be exempt from UK council tax. Trouble is they now post messages online (such as times of exams) which we then have to correct. As an expat employee I am always getting grief because the standard systems do not work for me.

As Moving says, keep strong and sometimes you will need to get stroppy to get anything changed.

[TS888]

In my experience from the US, corporate card bill goes to the employee, and in filing your expense report you validate the charges, then company pays direct. The last two US companies I worked for, the whole process was over the web, so you could keep expenses up to date from anywhere. Very nice. Wouldn't work with a HK bank, as there is no paper to shuffle. Maybe in another 50 years...

I'm a local hire, and my company (HK based) is similar to the OP's -- no corporate credit cards, no company phone, only a company BB and using it as a phone is prohibited. We have a company policy that states you cannot use roaming, you must buy a local SIM and then charge the cost of the local calls (not the whole SIM cost, just the calls you make) back to the company. Expense report settlement takes 60 days on avg.

On the up side, I'm accumulating AmEx points at a staggering rate.

So, the OP's company isn't cheap, they're just getting their HK on...

[bigjimmy]

you can ask for anything you want.
and your company can also do whatever they want.
it goes both way, so think which one is more important, your expense or your job?