This is my first time traveling for company business and I'm really nervous because I have a list of opposing factors working against my particular situation.

First, I am having to rent a car, despite the fact that this is an in-state trip because I don't have a car and my family does not have me on their insurance to risk driving the family car.

My company wants to pay for all my travel expenses but I'm fairly new with the company (Sept '07) and don't want to charge them more than I have to.

So I have to rent a car, but the rental car agency does not open until 7:30am and I have an 11:00am appointment that according to MapQuest is 2 hr and 45 minutes away, but a human source tells me it will be about 3 1/2 hour drive in traffic. That puts my arrival time at 11:00am exactly. No grace period. Hmm not good for punctuality.

I plan to take care of the paperwork this evening at the rental agency so they can just hand me the keys tomorrow morning.

Of course, I also have the option to rent the car today (which will cost an extra $50+) so that I can leave earlier tomorrow morning and return the car Thursday evening.

What should I do?
I've panicked a couple of times already thinking about all the things that could slow me down on the drive: weather, accidents, traffic, getting lost.

But if I pay to rent the car for an extra day should I... eat the $50 or bill the company? I don't like the idea of billing the company for that extra day since this is California and most people own a car and don't need to rent one so I'm really worried about how renting a car for in-state travel will look to the CEO and accounting. I'd rather eat the $50 dollars, but when they see the receipt, they might insist I bill them.

Now I'm at the rental dealer's mercy to see if they have a car available tonight.

Hi Lena. It is a company expense, right? It doesn't matter if it's instate, you need the car to get there.

Give them the whole bill because they ARE NOT going to see the bill and insist that you bill them... They said that they will pay for the expenses, let them pay. That's a business, $50.00 is not going to anger them. Relax, try not to what-if so much. Everything will be fine.

Take care. DeeDee.