With the mileage reimbursement rate now up to 48.5 cents per mile. it may be of interest to walk through a cost analysis to see if videoconferencing can be justified. Here is a scenario:

Assume a monthly management meeting for an organization with 7 field offices and a central office. The seven field office managers travel to the Central Office for a meeting each month. The meeting takes about six hours. The Executive Director and staff are already at the Central Office and have no travel time. The seven field office people travel anywhere from 20-132 miles to get to the Central Office. Travel time and distance calculations were taken from Google Maps link.

We figure a total of 544 miles driven one-way, and a total of 13 person/hours driven.

We’re assuming that everyone drives their own vehicle, and is compensated at the 48.5 cent/mile rate for travel, and their hourly rate for their travel time.

The total mileage cost is $263.85

The total compensation rate for the hours traveled is $426.53

Total one-way travel cost is $690.37

Double the cost for the round trip $1380.74

And we haven’t even held our meeting yet! By the time we figure in a six hour meeting with everyone’s hourly rate figured in… $229.69 x 6 = 1378.13, the travel costs exceed the hourly costs for participation during the meeting.

Total calculated costs: 1380.75+1378.13 = $2758.88

Don’t like these numbers? Download the spreadsheet.