TL;DR
Equipment for working abroad is usually the easiest part of a workation request and the part people worry about most. The laptop almost always travels with the person. What needs deciding is support, insurance, what happens if it breaks, and how long is long enough that the trip stops being a trip.
- A hand carried work laptop on a short trip is routine almost everywhere.
- Support and warranty are where short trips actually go wrong, not customs.
- Set a duration threshold. Beyond it, treat the request as a relocation.
- Device security on untrusted networks matters more than the hardware question.
- Tax and employment status are separate questions. Do not answer them here.
The moment this becomes real
Say a designer asks to work from Portugal for seven weeks over the summer. Their manager says yes before checking with anyone, because it sounds like a non event. They take the laptop, which nobody thinks twice about.
In week three the screen fails. The machine was bought in the UK, the warranty is domestic only, and the nearest authorised repair centre wants proof of purchase from an entity that does not trade in Portugal. IT offers to ship a replacement, then discovers that sending a company laptop to a residential address abroad is not the same as posting a parcel.
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The designer loses nine working days. Nobody did anything unreasonable at any point. The real issue is not whether the laptop could go to Portugal. It is that the only question anybody asked was whether the trip was allowed.
When this is lighter than you think
Four stages where this needs no real process.
- Trips under about two weeks. A work laptop in hand luggage is ordinary. The risk of something needing repair in that window is small.
- Inside one customs area, on a familiar route. Moving a device within a single customs territory removes most of the import questions.
- Cloud only work. If nothing lives on the disk and the machine is replaceable, a failure abroad is an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
- You already have a travel policy that covers devices. Many do without anybody realising. Check before writing a second one.
It gets heavier past about a month, in markets with strict import rules, and wherever the person expects to keep working rather than taking leave.
The five questions teams actually ask
Can they take the company laptop? Almost always yes for a personal work device carried by its user. Rules on declaring commercial goods and on temporary import vary by country and sometimes by value, so check the destination for longer stays. For a short trip this is rarely the blocker people expect it to be.
What if it breaks? This is the question that actually matters and the one nobody asks. Warranty cover is frequently domestic by default, and international service is often a paid option rather than a given. Find out what applies to that specific machine before the trip, not during it.
Are we insured? Company property away from its usual location is not automatically covered by the same terms. Check what your policy says about overseas use and about how long is too long, because many have a limit.
What about the network? The genuine security change is working from hotels, cafes and shared flats rather than the person’s home. Full disk encryption, a current operating system and sensible access controls do more here than any rule about which countries are allowed.
Does this create a tax or employment problem? Possibly, and it has nothing to do with the laptop. Permanent establishment, payroll and right to work questions differ by jurisdiction and by duration. Route those to finance and to local advisers rather than resolving them in an equipment policy.
Three ways teams handle it, and where each breaks
Say nothing and let people travel. The unwritten default at most companies. It costs nothing and works until something breaks. It fails because the first real incident is handled as an emergency by people with no information, and because nobody knows how many devices are currently out of the country.
A blanket duration limit. Allow trips up to a set number of weeks, refer anything longer. Easy to communicate and genuinely useful. It breaks when the limit is treated as the whole policy, so a three week trip to a market with difficult import rules gets waved through on the same terms as one to the next country over.
A short request form with an equipment section. Duration, destination, device, and a named person who confirms warranty and insurance. This works. It breaks only if the form becomes an approval queue, at which point people stop telling you and travel anyway.
Five questions to find your own position
Working out your position on equipment for working abroad takes about an hour with these five.
How many people are abroad with company hardware right now? If you cannot answer, that is the finding rather than a side note.
Is your warranty international on the machines you buy? Check the actual purchase terms rather than the manufacturer’s marketing page.
What does your insurance say about overseas use? Most policies have a duration limit. Find yours before somebody exceeds it.
Could you ship a replacement to that country next week? If the honest answer is no, the duration limit should be shorter than you think.
Who says yes? If it is the line manager alone, nobody is checking the things managers cannot know.
What is actually available
Five honest options for the equipment side, including ours.
Carry it and hope. Best for short trips, and it is what almost everyone does. Free. Struggles on anything that goes wrong, because there is no plan beyond improvisation.
Buy international warranty upfront. Best where travel is common and predictable. Turns a crisis into a service call. Struggles because it has to be bought with the machine, so it does not help the laptop already in the field.
Keep a travel loaner pool. Best for teams with a lot of movement and a home office. The traveller takes a machine you can afford to lose. Struggles on setup time and on the fact that most people want their own device.
A local repair shop at the destination. Best for a quick fix on a non sensitive machine. Struggles on data handling, warranty voiding and on having no relationship with whoever opens the laptop.
RemoAsset. Best when people work from markets you have no presence in and a failure means a replacement has to arrive quickly. Chosen because global laptop procurement and delivery covers more than 80 countries, so the replacement is a request rather than a research project, and maintenance and repairs run through a party that already knows the device. Where it struggles: it does nothing about the tax, payroll or right to work questions, which are the ones most likely to stop a workation, and for occasional short trips inside your own region it is more than the problem needs. It publishes an entry subscription price but no per device rates.
Where to start, by situation
| Situation | Scale | Setup | Primary pain | Recommended starting point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trips under 2 weeks, nearby | Any | Any | Essentially none | Say yes and note the destination |
| Up to 6 weeks, same region | A few a year | No travel policy | Nobody checks warranty or insurance | A one page request form with an equipment section |
| Long stays, distant markets | Any | No local presence | Replacement cannot reach them | Set a duration limit you can actually support |
| Frequent travel across many countries | 20 plus trips a year | Distributed team | Repairs and replacements improvised | A global service such as RemoAsset |
| Request beyond 3 months | Any | Any | This is no longer a trip | Treat it as relocation and involve finance |
What the gap actually costs
The cost that gets discussed is a replacement laptop. It is almost never the real one, because most trips end uneventfully and the occasional machine is affordable.
The cost that lands is downtime. Someone productive, in a different time zone, unable to work for a week while three teams work out whose problem it is. That happens a handful of times a year in most companies and nobody attributes it to the absence of a policy.
The third is quieter and worse. Once people learn that asking produces a slow answer or a no, they stop asking. You then have company hardware in countries you do not know about, on networks you cannot see, held by people who will not mention a problem until it is serious. So the question is not whether to allow working abroad. It is whether your answer makes people tell you where they are.
When saying yes needs more than goodwill
Most teams can run this on judgement for a long time. The point it stops working is when the destinations become unfamiliar and the stays get longer, because both move the problem from the person to the supply chain.
What changes is the recovery path. A policy can tell somebody they may travel. It cannot get a working machine to a flat in a city where you have never shipped anything. When replacement and repair run through one party with coverage in the markets your people actually go to, the answer to a broken screen stops depending on which country it happened in.
Before buying anything, do the cheap version. Write the duration limit down, check the warranty terms on your standard machine, read what the insurance says about overseas use, and ask IT what shipping a replacement to your three most common destinations would actually involve. If all four answers are fine, you do not have a problem yet. RemoAsset publishes its approach to device security and data handling if the security half is what concerns you most.
See how device delivery works across 80+ countries
Read our guide to equipment for constant travellers
Related reading
- Equipment for constant travellers
- Writing a hybrid work policy
- A remote work security policy people will follow
- Equipment parity across countries
- Cross border working has rules beyond equipment. The EU publishes guidance on posted workers, and the UK NCSC publishes device security guidance covering untrusted networks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an employee take company equipment for working abroad?
For a personal work device carried by its user, this is routine on most routes. Rules on temporary import and on declaring commercial goods vary by country and sometimes by value, so check the destination for longer stays. Short trips inside a familiar region are rarely where the real problem sits.
What happens if the laptop breaks while they are away?
This is the most common failure and the least planned for. Warranty cover is often domestic by default and international service is frequently a paid extra. Confirm what applies to that specific machine before the trip, and find out whether you could actually ship a replacement to that country.
Does our insurance cover a device used overseas?
Not automatically, and many policies carry a duration limit for property away from its usual location. Read the terms rather than assuming, particularly for stays beyond a few weeks. This is a cheap check that prevents an expensive surprise.
How long is too long for a workation?
There is no universal answer, because the limits come from tax, employment and immigration rules rather than from equipment. Many teams set an internal threshold of four to six weeks and refer anything longer to finance. Pick a number and apply it consistently rather than deciding per request.
Should we restrict which countries people can work from?
A short list of destinations you can actually support is more useful than a long list of banned ones. Base it on where you could ship a replacement and where your insurance holds, and be honest that the restriction is practical rather than about trust.
What security changes when someone works abroad?
Mostly the network rather than the country. Hotels, cafes and shared accommodation are less controlled than a home office. Full disk encryption, a current operating system and sensible access controls matter more than any destination rule, and they are things you should have anyway.
Do we need a separate policy for this?
Often not. Many companies already have travel and remote working policies that cover devices without anybody noticing. Check what exists before writing something new, then add the equipment section if it is genuinely missing. A short addition beats a second policy nobody reads.
