Couple more questions:
1- If the business meal we are eating is under $75 do we need the itemized receipt? When meeting with locals a lot of the time they want to eat at a local place that tends to be inexpensive. We also are attending happy hours targeting our tourist/golfer clientele and connecting with potential clients buying them a drink or 2. Nothing is extravagant or lavish we try to keep things friendly and make a connection were handing them our card and offering our service and expertise is welcome.
2- For us we consider it a complete business trip. We need to respond to emails, check on shipping and update our product offerings like we do when we are "home". In the summer we are meeting with Pro shops and promoting our business by meeting golfers at the driving range and other "golf friendly" locations a few days a week. In the winter none of them are open around us. Yes we could go to Florida or California which has a strong golfing community however its a mix of people on vacation and locals. Targeting people on vacation in the Caribbean that also play golf tends to increase the affluence level. While there we have daily goals of connecting with a minimum of 5 golfers who are on vacation all 7 days of the week which is a lot more then we would do "at home" daily. We target islands which attract US and Canadians citizens as they tend to have a higher concentration of our clientele, however we ship worldwide so any golfer is a target. As most Americans stay 1 week and Canadians 2 weeks we are able to keep a fresh rotation of "target clientele". With Golf being so weather dependent. we try to choose islands with at least 2 golf courses and at least one high profile course. We meet with Locals to discuss the potential of setting up their own local business and using us as a supplier... while this arm of the business has not proven successful YET we feel there is a real potential for this working.
We grocery shop (non-expensed) and cook in the apartment for breakfast and non-working meals. We expense meals eaten out as we are networking and handing out cards or we are eating with a pro or other potential business partner. Over the 2–3-month period we maybe eat 3-5 meals that are over $75 and maybe 1 we would consider personal like a special Valentines Day Dinner. We do not expense any tours we take for personal reasons. We do expense our golf fees, country club entrance fees and such as that is a great place to meet golfers and their spouses and network.
Because we do such heavy promotions of our business while we are there every day do you feel/think we would run into an issue claiming the entire trip as business. We do have some "personal time" each day but there are no days that we take the whole day off as "personal".
In order to justify the above work what type of records do we need to keep? We don't buy most people drinks, we usually strike up conversations with someone we identify as a golfer, give our pitch with nothing physically exchanged except names and our card.
3- We would like to expense all lodging, all airfare and all meals/drinks eaten out during networking. Based on the above do you think we might run into any issues?
