In this article
Reimbursing the commute feels like a footnote on the payslip, until an audit tells you it isn't. Seven numbers to find the right amount — for your team, and for your own peace of mind.
Almost every restaurant pays some form of commuting allowance, and almost nobody has ever checked whether the amount is actually right. It sits on the payslip as a fixed line, someone once typed in a figure that "seemed about right", and nothing has changed since — not when a staff member moves house, buys a new bike, or the price of a season ticket goes up.
That's riskier than it feels. Underpaying isn't a bookkeeping nuance — it's a debt that quietly accumulates year after year, one a labour inspection can surface in a single audit, retroactively, for the whole team. Overpaying costs money that didn't need to be spent: a bike allowance is often cheaper than the public-transport reimbursement many restaurants keep paying out of habit, for the same commute, never revisited.
The right amount isn't a guess. It depends on three things you already know today: how far a staff member lives, how they get to work, and how many shifts a week they work. Multiply that by a rate per kilometre — bike, public transport and car each follow their own logic — and you get a concrete figure per employee, per week and per year.
This article walks through the seven numbers that together decide what you owe — from the distance most schemes start reimbursing from to what a year of underpaying can cost you in an audit. A calculator at the end combines all seven into a concrete figure for your own team.
Why this is more than a line on the payslip
A commuting allowance in hospitality usually isn't the employer's free choice — it sits in a sectoral agreement or a statutory minimum scale that rises with distance, the same way the 13th-month bonus and the predictable-schedule rules elsewhere on this site do. The problem isn't that restaurants pay nothing, it's that the amount was set once and never revisited, while every change — a new hire, a house move, a season-ticket price rise — quietly shifts what's actually owed.
That gap is rarely large per employee per week, but it compounds. Six staff each underpaid by a few euros a week for a year add up to a sum a labour inspection reclaims in one go — with penalties on top, not just the difference itself. On the other side, restaurants that never revisit their rates often keep paying the pricier option (public transport) out of habit, when a bike allowance for the same distance would be cheaper — for the business and usually tax-free for the employee too.
Worth saying upfront: this is a **house document, not legal advice**. The exact rules — which distance counts, what share of a season ticket, what rate per kilometre — differ by country and by sectoral agreement (Joint Committee 302 for hospitality in Belgium, the Netherlands' own travel-reimbursement scheme, different again elsewhere). The figures below are common, widely used rates and structures to make the conversation concrete — always check your own sectoral minimum before paying out the final amount.
The 7 numbers
Every number below feeds the calculator further down this article. Together they decide not just what you owe, but what underpaying it can cost you.
1. The distance where it starts to count
Most reimbursement schemes aren't linear from the front door: a very short distance — a few hundred metres to a couple of kilometres — often doesn't count, because it's covered on foot or by bike at no meaningful cost. Only past that threshold does the allowance start climbing.
That threshold differs by scheme and by country, so don't treat it as a fixed figure — the calculator further down lets you set your own, so your own sectoral agreement stays the one that decides, not a number that happened to sit here.
2. The bike rate
A per-kilometre bike allowance is, in many countries, a fixed, tax-advantaged amount — often a few tens of cents per kilometre, indexed yearly. For the business it's usually the cheapest way to reimburse a commute, and for the employee it's typically tax-free up to a ceiling.
It's also the rate restaurants most often forget to update: a figure set three years ago has almost certainly drifted from the current official scale. Check it yearly — it takes two minutes and prevents both under- and over-paying.
3. The public-transport share
For public transport, the full price of a season ticket usually isn't reimbursed from the first kilometre — the share typically rises in bands as distance grows: the further a staff member lives, the larger the percentage of the ticket price reimbursed, often reaching 100% past a certain distance.
That stepped pattern — illustrated in the first graphic below — is exactly why one flat percentage for everyone rarely holds up. Two staff members at different distances can legally be entitled to a very different share of the same ticket price.
An illustration of the stepped pattern behind number 3 — not the exact scale of any one country, but the shape most schemes follow.
Always check the current scale of your own sectoral agreement — this graphic shows the pattern, not the precise percentage.
4. The rate for a private car
Staff who drive usually fall under a different per-kilometre rate than the bike — often higher, because it approximates the real cost of driving (fuel, depreciation, insurance) rather than just acting as an incentive. That makes the car structurally the priciest of the three to reimburse, visible in the second graphic below at the exact same distance.
Some sectoral schemes only reimburse a car when no reasonable public-transport alternative exists — check whether that condition applies in your region before granting the rate automatically.
Bike, public transport and car over the exact same eight kilometres — each reimbursed at its own common rate.
Adjust the rates in the calculator below and this comparison recalculates automatically.
5. The annual cost per employee
Multiply the round-trip distance by the rate per kilometre, by the number of shifts a week, and by the number of effective working weeks a year — count on roughly 46 rather than 52, to account for holidays, sick leave and closures — and you get a concrete annual figure per employee. It rarely appears as its own budget line, but it's there, spread across twelve payslips.
For a team of a handful of staff that adds up quickly to a few thousand euros a year — worth deliberately revisiting once a year rather than letting it run on autopilot.
6. What a year of underpaying costs
This is the number that makes an audit expensive. A labour inspection doesn't just correct the current month — it typically looks back up to three years, and reclaims the full difference per employee, with penalties on top of the amount itself. An allowance that ran a few euros a week short for twelve months turns, in one go, into a bill that comfortably exceeds the annual figure from number five.
That risk is exactly why an annual check of your own rates against the current official scale is the cheapest insurance you can buy against this cost.
7. The radius that shapes your hiring pool
A correct allowance isn't only a cost — it's also why an applicant from further away decides the commute is worth it. Finding hospitality staff is hard enough already; someone living twenty kilometres further is more likely to consider the job if the commute isn't coming out of their own pocket.
That makes the allowance one of the cheapest ways to widen your hiring radius without raising the wage itself — and exactly why it deserves more than a figure that was typed in once and never looked at again.
Calculate the allowance for your team
Enter your own team's numbers and the calculator combines them into a concrete figure: per week, per year, and what a year of underpaying would cost in an audit.
The starting values are one employee cycling 8 km, four shifts a week — adjust them to your own team and every number below recalculates automatically.
Commuting allowance calculator
Four numbers from your team, one amount as the answer.
Per week
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Per year (team)
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Per employee / month
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Audit exposure (12 mo)
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This figure is a starting point based on common rates, not a final verdict. Replace the rates with the exact figures from your own sectoral agreement as soon as you know them — the calculator stays useful every year after that with updated numbers.
What is fixed: an allowance you never revisit is an allowance that will, sooner or later, drift from the current scale — in either direction.
What to do this week, this month and this year
Nobody fixes an allowance in one evening. This order does, because every step makes the next one measurable.
This week — map what you're paying now
- Next to each employee, note the distance, the commute mode and the amount currently paid out.
- Fill in the calculator above with your own numbers and compare the result with what's currently on the payslip.
- Note which staff members show the biggest gap — that's where you start correcting.
This month — hold your own rates against the current scale
- Look up the current scale of your own sectoral agreement for bike, public transport and car.
- Work out with that scale exactly what each employee should be receiving, and compare with step 1.
- Correct the current payslip for anyone underpaid — waiting only lets the shortfall grow.
This year — make it a standing check
- Fix one moment a year — for instance at the annual indexation — to recheck every rate.
- Ask new hires explicitly about their distance and commute mode at the start, instead of defaulting to a standard amount.
- Re-run the calculator after any change to your team — a growing team with more staff earns an annual look, not a one-off.
The right amount is a calculation, not a habit
A commuting allowance that's "always been like this" feels safe, but safe isn't the same as correct. The right amount isn't what was typed in three years ago — it's four numbers you already know today: how far each employee lives, how they get to work, how many shifts they work, and what rate currently applies.
Those four numbers together produce a concrete figure per week, per year, and a clear picture of what underpaying would cost in an audit — no guesswork, no allowance that's been repeating itself for years without ever being revisited.
The only thing left after that is one fixed moment a year to hold the rates against the current scale again — a payslip doesn't remember anything on its own.