Out with the old: Why manual needs to make way for automated expense reports

The right solution, with the right automation, changes all that. At Payhawk, for example, related spend gets split across tools, people, and time. Automated expense reports group every flight, hotel, taxi, and meal into one complete, documented report that’s ERP-ready and audit-safe. Employees stop tagging and resubmitting. Approvers review once and can reject a single line without blocking the rest. Accountants export only clean, compliant data. And CFOs see the full trip or project cost mid-cycle, not weeks later.

Why it matters:

• Close faster: Approvals move in one pass and reconciliations finish sooner.
• Reduce risk: Incomplete or missing data never reaches the ERP.
• Lift morale: Employees stop regrouping expenses and resubmitting reports.
• Cut overhead: Finance stops stitching data together by hand.
• Decide sooner: Leaders see true costs in time to act.

Should you care about automated expense reports?

In short, yes. If you’re involved in expense reporting, you’ve probably felt one of these frustrations (meaning the insights in this blog are exactly what you need):

• Financial Controllers & Accountants: Incomplete data, ERP fixes, and extra reconciliations > “I spend hours regrouping scattered expenses into one report. If I miss one, the ERP books are incomplete.
• CFOs: Delayed closes, poor visibility into spending patterns > “I can’t see the real cost of a project until someone manually stitches it together. That delays forecasting and slows close”.
• Approvers: Too many fragmented notifications > “One trip equals ten notifications. I want to approve it once instead of every sandwich receipt”.
• Employees: Wasted time grouping and resubmitting expenses > “I went on one trip but had to submit five separate expenses. If one line gets rejected, I redo the whole report”.
• Compliance & Audit Managers: Missing audit trails and higher regulatory risk > “With expenses scattered everywhere, it’s hard to ensure only complete, compliant data makes it to the books”.

The solution: Automated expense reports

The real inefficiency in expense management isn’t just receipts and data entry; it’s that related expenses never come together without manual effort. One trip can trigger ten separate approvals, and one rejected meal can force an employee to redo the entire report.

Payhawk’s new Automated Expense Report feature fixes that.

With Payhawk, related expenses, whether from a business trip or a project, are automatically grouped into one ERP-ready report. Employees prep faster, approvers get one notification instead of many, accountants export cleaner data, and finance leaders finally see the true cost of a trip or project without manual regrouping.

Here’s how it works in practice:

1. Auto-populate: Define the start and end dates of a trip or apply a project tag in the Automated Expense Reports. Any expenses that match the date range and/or tag is automatically attached to the right report. No need for employees to tag receipts manually.
2. Auto-submit: When the trip or project end date passes, the report is automatically flagged as “ready”. If the employee hasn’t submitted, Payhawk nudges them with a reminder. After three days, the system auto-submits on their behalf, so reimbursement and approvals don’t stall.
3. Consolidated approval: Approvers no longer get ten separate pings. With one click, they can approve everything. If one dinner receipt looks wrong, they reject only that item.
4. ERP-ready export: Accountants can book expenses separately or as a group. Incomplete expenses are automatically blocked from export until fixed, so only clean, compliant data reaches the ERP.

The result: One submission, one approval, one export, instead of a mess of fragmented processes.

Trips: expenses within the trip dates auto-attach to one report.
Projects: expenses with the project tag (and in range) group into a single report.
Quality control: items missing documents or already assigned stay blocked until fixed.

Result: one clean report, fewer pings for approvers, and ERP-ready data for finance.

Now you have automation — it removes the mess and makes reporting transparent, accountable, and fast across the organisation.

How does this look in real life? Set trip dates or add a project tag, and everything from flights to meals lands in one structured report. Your reports finally reflect the trip or project — not a pile of scattered receipts.

How Payhawk supports the shift from manual to automatic reporting

Most solutions digitise expenses but still leave employees, approvers, and accountants to manually group receipts from trips and projects. That’s why finance teams still waste hours tagging and cleaning data.

Payhawk closes this gap by:

• Auto-grouping related expenses into one report per trip/project
• Ensuring clean ERP exports: accountants can book expenses separately or as a group, with incomplete lines automatically blocked until fixed
• Reducing noise for approvers: one notification per report, not ten
• Giving CFOs visibility: the true cost of each trip or project is clear before month-end

How automated expense reporting works

Manual reporting scatters receipts, floods approvers with pings, and hides true costs until after month-end. Whereas, automated expense reports flip that script: related spend lands in one complete, compliant, ERP-ready report.

Cleaner data, stronger insight
Before: finance chases receipts and stitches fragments. After: one complete report per trip or project — no gaps, no duplicates.

Faster approvals, shorter close
Before: ten notifications for one trip. After: one consolidated report; approve in one click or reject a single line.

Audit-ready by default
Before: incomplete items slip into the ERP. After: missing VAT, receipts, or cost centres stay blocked until fixed.

Simpler for employees
Before: manual tagging, resubmissions, and slow reimbursements. After: expenses auto-attach by date or project; reports nudge and auto-submit after trip end.

ERP integration, real-time visibility
Before: visibility arrives weeks later during reconciliation. After: only clean data flows to the ERP at header or line level, ready to book.

Result: one report per trip or project, fewer errors, hours saved across teams, and visibility CFOs can act on before close.

Don’t take our word for it, see the Payhawk impact

For Financial Controllers = Cleaner data, one ERP-ready report

We’re saving 2 hours per week and cut review time by 50% with fewer errors. Managers can challenge travel costs and dive into specific reimbursements.

— Axell Girard, Financial Controller, SpendHQ

For Approvers = Less noise, shorter cycle time

The Trip functionality has been a fantastic benefit for our team. It gives us clear visibility into all expenses during travel, making the process more transparent and manageable. Our travellers find it easy to use, and it saves significant time by allowing one report instead of multiple individual submissions. It’s already reduced manual work for everyone involved.

— Sami Abu-Bakr, Team Lead Accounts Payable, Unzer

Five best practices for automating expense reports

For your organisation to get the most out of automation, there are a few best practices you can follow:

1. Define clear grouping rules

You need clear grouping rules, e.g., trips, projects, or dates, to help standardise expense data at a group level. This keeps submissions together, avoids duplicates, and makes it easier to spot spending patterns and tailored expense categories and custom fields remove inefficiencies and waste. It’s a no-brainer.

2. Use auto-submit nudges

If you reject an expense or need additional information, gentle auto-submit nudges can help get the expense back on track, avoiding unnecessary delays or additional manual work. These nudges guide employees, helping them complete what they need to, keeping the process ticking over nicely.

These reminders can help reduce the time it takes employees to resubmit expenses by 70%!

3. Enable line-level approvals

Line-level approval doesn’t just mean you can assign different approvers to different expense items (i.e. if the expense spans different departments). Line-level approvals also mean approvers just reject the item that’s incorrect, rather than the whole report. When you do reject an expense, it’s clearer to the employee what/why you have rejected it, improving accuracy and transparency in financial management and reporting.

4. Block incomplete expenses from ERP export

Ensuring only complete data enters your ERP is essential. This reduces the need for manual corrections and errors downstream. That’s why, in Payhawk, only the expenses reviewed, completed, and settled will export to your ERP system. So, you can enjoy clean, confirmed data leading to faster reconciliation and less time correcting inaccuracies.

These best practices not only make automation smoother but also ensure finance teams trust the system.

A recap — the real impact of automating expense reports

With Payhawk, every trip or project is captured in one complete report, fully documented, ERP-ready, and audit-safe.

• Employees: Expense incurred during the defined dates and/or with the project tag auto-attached to one report. Auto-submit after the end date keeps reimbursements moving.
• Approvers: One notification per report. Approve in one click or return a single line without rejecting everything.
• Accountants: Book expenses separately or as a group. Incomplete lines are blocked from export until fixed, so only clean data reaches the ERP.
• Controllers and compliance: Track the full lifecycle for each trip or project from submission to approval to export in one place.
• CFO: See the full cost of each trip or project mid-cycle, not only after month-end.

Result: One submission, one approval, one export, instead of a mess of fragmented receipts.

See Payhawk’s automated reporting in action; book a demo with our team.