How car dealerships & repair shops can cut costs and streamline expense management

Facing expense management challenges in the automotive industry? Or working in finance for an eBike company and drowning in receipts? You're not alone. From wading through excessive paperwork to juggling reimbursements, what you actually need is proper finance automation, complete spend data visibility, and empowered spending (all without compromising on control).

So far, so unrealistic? Actually, no. You can transform your current processes into transparent and ultra-efficient workflows, and here's how:

A deeper dive into expense management challenges facing the automotive industry

Finance leaders in the automotive industry face a unique set of expense management challenges that slow down processes, reduce visibility, and create unnecessary risk, including:

• Disjointed expense data. You likely have multiple workshop or branch locations. Without a spend management solution, you’ll be facing disjointed expense data and non-standardised processes. One workshop submits expenses one way, and another follows a different process. This makes it incredibly difficult to closely track and analyse company spend.
• Reimbursable expenses. Another big challenge for the automotive sector is reimbursable expenses. Not only are employees spending their own money to fund business-related costs (so you can’t see what’s being spent until they submit reports), but they’re also waiting for reimbursement — and you’re not controlling how much or from which companies they’re spending.
• Manual data entry. Entering data manually isn’t just time-consuming, it’s error-prone. That means your data isn’t accurate enough to make important business decisions, such as resource allocation or supporting cash flow forecasts.
• Petty cash and fraud. Relying on petty cash increases the risk of fraud, especially with limited oversight or missing receipts. Replacing it with company cards and automated approval flows ensures real-time tracking, proper documentation, and improved fraud prevention.

All these together? You’ve got some big financial planning and security problems.

Tackling expense management like this is fraught with clumsy data entry errors, missing receipts, lost VAT reclaim opportunities, sporadic out-of-budget spending, and more.

Seven ways to enhance visibility and control over automotive expenses

1. Make use of real-time expense tracking

Track spend in real time so you can better manage cash flow. With Payhawk, you see spend as soon as it happens. As soon as cardholders spend, it’s visible in your dashboard, so you can proactively adjust budgets whenever necessary.

2. Implement automated approval workflows for transactions

Control spending with automated approval workflows that fit your policies. Instead of letting employees spend sporadically and without accountability, you can create custom approval workflows that automatically kick into action when an expense is submitted.

For example, you might allow anything under £50 without needing approval. But as soon as the expense exceeds this amount, the designated approver is notified to accept or reject.

All scenarios are possible. With Payhawk’s workflow designer, you can create flexible approval flows that match your organisational needs.

3. Budget tracking per team, project, local, and more

Stay on budget with real-time tracking across teams and projects. Create budgets and assign them to individuals, projects, or teams. This keeps spend aligned with your allocated budget.

You’ll get notifications when you’re close to exceeding a budget, and you can see at a glance what percentage each team or individual has spent. Keep spending visible, always.

4. Corporate cards for every need

Replace petty cash with trackable corporate cards. If petty cash is rife in your automotive business, it’s time to rethink. It’s hard to control how much employees spend — or what they’re spending it on. Money disappears into the ether.

Instead, assign a virtual or physical card to each employee who needs to spend, such as office managers or salespeople. Every transaction is trackable and every cardholder accountable.

You can also issue cards for specific purposes like fuel, travel, or entertainment, create single-use cards for projects, define which merchants users can spend at, or deactivate a card after funds are spent. Simple, straightforward fund control for every purpose.

5. Custom card controls, limits, and approval flows

Define spend rules so employees only spend within your framework. Set card limits and approval flows in the backend, and it’s impossible for users not to comply. No unnecessary or frivolous spending goes through unless it’s explicitly approved.

This empowers cardholders to make the purchases they need to do their jobs — without waiting for permission or chasing down approvals. With Payhawk, spend control becomes second nature.

6. Auto-blocking and card-freezing

Enforce compliance automatically with card blocking and freezing. If someone doesn’t submit their expenses on time, their card will auto-block. Without expense management software, finance teams would chase endlessly — wasting hours. With Payhawk, the software does it all for you.

Company funds are also protected if a card is lost or stolen. You can freeze the card yourself, or with Payhawk’s card freezing feature, it’s automatically frozen if transactions look suspicious. Travelling employees don’t need to worry either, as card freezing instantly declines any attempted purchases.

7. Auto-track carbon emissions on all card spend (ESG)

Track carbon emissions automatically to meet ESG goals. Emissions are significant across the automotive sector, from supply chains to vehicle use. Customers increasingly prefer eco-aware companies, but to reduce emissions, you first need to understand them.

Calculating this manually is time-consuming and error-prone. Payhawk automatically calculates all carbon emissions associated with card transactions. This keeps you informed about Scope 3 emissions and gives you the chance to take meaningful action, like reducing personal travel and embracing public transport.

How tech can streamline your automotive expense management

Cut paperwork and errors with automation

Drastically reduce paperwork and avoid clumsy data errors with automated expense management. Who actually enjoys paperwork? It’s tedious and opens the door to mistakes you can’t afford. By automating your expenses, you make processes faster and more accurate — just like automotive service chain ATU.

Mathias Goetz, Senior Project Manager at ATU, says:

When buying parts from other companies in the sector, our branch managers would historically always reach for cash, generating a massive amount of paperwork. With Payhawk, we have a solution that lets us streamline processes and save on overhead costs.

Manage vendor relationships and payment methods

Save time with ERP integrations that pull supplier details directly into Payhawk. Managing suppliers doesn’t have to be painful. Vendor payment details sync automatically from your ERP, so you don’t have to re-enter data. Pay vendors your way — SEPA, ACH, local transfers, or international payments in multiple currencies.

Fraud risks are reduced, too. Only admins can create new suppliers, and every supplier change is logged, giving you a clear audit trail if you ever need to investigate.

Helps you automatically reclaim VAT

Recover VAT effortlessly with digital receipts and specialist integrations. Why lose money on unclaimed VAT when automation makes recovery simple? Payhawk categorises expenses accurately and collects receipts digitally, so VAT reclaim happens without extra effort. Thanks to our partnership with 60dias, you can even recover VAT on receipts up to four years old in some jurisdictions.

That’s real money back into your business. Just ask Payhawk customer ATU, who reclaimed €2 million in tax:

We no longer have to chase receipts. Since using Payhawk, managers must simply take a picture of their receipt — thus digitising it — and enter it into the automated finance system. In the first year, this change resulted in ATU recouping €2 million from the tax office that would have otherwise been lost.

Optimise financial decisions with AI and machine learning

Use AI to cut manual work, spot anomalies, and keep spending within policy.

Payhawk’s AI agents act like a teammate, following the same spend rules you set for your team. They:

• Suggest expense notes
• Extract receipt info with optical character recognition (OCR) technology
• Flag unusual expenses
• Even book travel in just two messages

AI removes resource-heavy tasks by sticking to your rules, so you stay in control without lifting a finger.

Haven’t seen it yet? Head to our AI agent page to learn more.

Empower travelling employees with a mobile app

Free employees from chasing receipts and keep business moving on the go. With Payhawk’s mobile app, employees simply snap a picture of a receipt. OCR technology extracts the details instantly - date, items, price — and the expense is logged. No more pockets full of paper.

Need more funds while travelling? Request in-app. Approvers get a push notification and approve or reject instantly, even if they’re not in the office. Business flows smoothly, wherever your team is.

Three practical tips for developing a comprehensive expense management strategy

1. Create expense policies that ensure compliance

Keep spending under control by enforcing rules automatically. Imagine never worrying about employees overspending or using company cards at the wrong merchants. With Payhawk, you build digital policies that set limits, define approved vendors, and lock in compliance across all entities. No chasing. No guesswork. Just automatic control at scale.

2. Use real-time data to uncover savings

Spot cost-saving opportunities instantly with centralised transaction data. Forget manual reconciliations and after-the-fact surprises. With real-time insights, you can quickly see where spend is creeping up, allocate resources more effectively, and adjust budgets before they spiral out of control. It’s like having a live financial dashboard that shows you exactly where money is going — and where you can save.

3. Make spend management part of the culture

Empower employees to spend responsibly while keeping funds secure. Picture this: every employee has a corporate card linked to their name, with limits tailored to their role. No more passing around a single company card. No more confusion about who spent what. Employees gain the autonomy to make purchases that support their work, while you stay in control with predefined policies. The result is trust, accountability, and zero overspend.

Porsche e-Bikes: Greater transparency, tighter control and less paperwork

Before switching to Payhawk, Porsche e-Bikes battled frequently with missing invoices, limited control over spend, and multiple users sharing one card.

Gabriela Leovac, Accountant at Porsche e-Bikes, explains:

The biggest problem was business travel expenses. We didn't have a system that let employees submit their trip expenses easily. And we wanted to find a solution that allowed employees to use corporate cards, apply for a daily allowance, upload all of their travel and work expenses, and get fast approvals.

Payhawk’s expense management solution has helped the organisation identify cost-saving opportunities, optimise budgets, make more informed business decisions, remove lags in visibility, eliminate out-of-pocket delays, reimburse in seconds, and simplify budgeting and accounting.

Ready to transform your business with Payhawk expense management? Request a free, personalised product demo.