The Internal Revenue Service has set the per diem rates that taxpayers can use to substantiate the amount of expenses for lodging, meals and incidental expenses when traveling away from home. See this post in AccountingToday by Michael Cohn for more details:

http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/IRS-Sets-Per-Diem-Rates-Lodging-Meals-Expenses-68178-1.html

You can take actual expenses if they will give you a bigger deduction than these per diem rates, but it gives you a starting point in case you are missing receipts to at least give you some travel deduction.

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