Payhawk supports US per diems natively. When your per diem policy uses the United States as its regulatory country, Payhawk calculates allowances following the US federal per diem model instead of the daily (calendar-day) or hourly models used in other countries.
The template Excel file with US per diem rates is based on the official rates published by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) for the continental United States, by the U.S. Department of State for foreign locations, and by the Department of Defense for non-foreign locations outside the continental US, such as Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. These are set as default values, and you can adapt them to your own policy.
The suggested per diem rates in the default US template for each country are based on publicly available sources and provided as general guidance only. These suggestions do not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Companies remain solely responsible for reviewing and adapting policies to their specific context and must consult legal, tax, or HR advisors before relying on or implementing them.
What the US per diem covers
The US federal model splits a per diem into two parts: lodging and M&IE (Meals and Incidental Expenses).
Payhawk calculates and reimburses the M&IE part of the allowance. You can reimburse accommodation as a regular expense, pay for it with a company card, or book it through the Travel AI Agent.
How the US calculation works
Payhawk splits the trip into calendar days, finds the M&IE rate of the destination for each day, and then applies the following rules:
First and last day of travel. The first and the last day of the trip are paid at 75% of the M&IE rate, following the GSA proration rule for travel days.
Days in between. Every day between the first and the last day is paid at the full M&IE rate for the destination of that day.
Same-day trips. A trip that starts and ends on the same calendar day is paid at 75% of the M&IE rate. Unlike the German model, the US model does not have an 8-hour minimum, so short same-day trips still produce an allowance.
Provided meals. When a meal is provided at no cost to the traveler, the employee marks it on the per diem, and Payhawk deducts the fixed amount configured for that meal from that calendar day. A day's allowance is never reduced below zero.
When a trip covers more than one destination, each calendar day is priced against the destination the employee was in on that day. The day of arrival at a new destination is priced at the new destination.
Example
An employee travels from Austin to Chicago for three days. Chicago has an M&IE rate of $92, with deductions of $23 for breakfast and $38 for dinner. The hotel provides breakfast on the second day.
Day | Rate applied | Deduction | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
Day 1 (arrival) | 75% of $92 | None | $69.00 |
Day 2 (full day) | $92 | Breakfast −$23 | $69.00 |
Day 3 (departure) | 75% of $92 | None | $69.00 |
Total | $207.00 |
The US per diem template
The US template for per diems in Payhawk contains one row per location. You ned to keep the header row as it is as the system will match the columns by name, and the import fails if the locationdefined, county, name, state, country, or meals column is missing. A file can contain up to 10,000 rows.
The rates in the US template are interpreted in your account base currency, and the template has no currency column. If your base currency is not US dollars, convert the values before you import the file.
The template includes the following columns:
locationdefined- The location exactly as published in the source tables, for example "Birmingham / Jefferson" or "Kabul, AFGHANISTAN". Required.county- The county or the area within the destination. Anything after the first comma is ignored. Required.name- The city name. Required. If a rate covers several cities, separate them with a forward slash, for example "Phoenix / Scottsdale", and Payhawk creates a rate for each of them.state- The two-letter state code for US locations. Required. Leave it empty for foreign locations.country- The three-letter country code of the location. Leave it empty for US locations, and Payhawk treats the row as United States. Useotherfor the global fallback row.meals- The full M&IE rate per day for the location. This is the value Payhawk uses to calculate the allowance. It is a single value per location, so it cannot vary by month. Required.breakfast,lunch,dinner,incidental expenses- The amount deducted from the daily allowance when the meal, or the incidental expenses, are provided at no cost to the traveler. Deductions in the US template are fixed amounts, not percentages.
Matching destinations to rates
When the employee selects a destination, Payhawk fills in the city, county, and state automatically from the location lookup, and then finds a rate in the following order:
The city in the destination country. If several rows share the city name, Payhawk narrows the match down by county.
The county, when the city has no rate of its own.
The Standard Rate row of the state, when neither the city nor the county has a rate. This is how GSA publishes the rate for all unlisted locations in a state.
The Standard Rate row of the country, when the state has no Standard Rate row. For the United States, this is the standard CONUS rate.
The
otherrow at the bottom of the template, when the destination country is not in the template at all.
Because unlisted locations fall back to a Standard Rate row, keep one Standard Rate row per state, one for the United States, and one
otherrow.
International travel
US per diem policies cover foreign travel as well. Foreign locations use the State Department M&IE rates, with deductions from the State Department meal breakdown.
Locations outside the continental United States that are not foreign, such as Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands, use the Department of Defense rates. Alaska and Hawaii are listed as US rows with a state code, and the territories are listed with their own country code.
Most foreign countries in the template have a Standard Rate row that applies to any location in that country without a rate of its own. Countries with a single listed locality do not have one.
The
otherrow is used only for countries that are missing from the template entirely. If a country is in the template but the destination matches neither a listed locality nor a Standard Rate row for that country, the per diem cannot be calculated and the system will throw an error. To avoid this issue, add a Standard Rate row for every country your employees travel to.
Setting up US rates
When your company is registered in the United States, every new per diem policy is pre-filled with the maintained US rates and rules, so you start from a complete set of GSA and State Department rates rather than build the file yourself.
As a result, you don’t need to download the generic Payhawk template file. Instead, download the rates of the policy itself, review them, and import your edited file back.
For more information on how to create the per diem policy, see the article on configuring the per diem expense type.
Keeping your rates up to date
GSA publishes new rates for each US fiscal year, which runs from 1 October to 30 September, and the State Department updates foreign rates monthly. As Payhawk does not fetch these updates into your existing policies, you need to review your rates at the start of each fiscal year, and either import an updated file into the existing policy or create a new policy for the new period.
If there are unpaid per diem expenses that use the old rates, Payhawk recalculates them automatically after the import.
Useful resources