How CFOs can regain control of employee spend

Can you pinpoint the moment finance loses control of employee spend? Do employees really overspend as soon as they're let loose with company money?

In truth, finance teams rarely lose control because employees overspend. They lose control because the rules are applied after the transaction. By the time finance sees the expense, the decision has already been made, and the money is already gone.

That is the structural weakness behind most employee spend processes.

Expense policies exist, approval workflows exist, and finance teams review claims every month. Yet many organisations still feel like they are constantly chasing spend rather than controlling it.

Recently, we sat down with Astaeka Pramuditya, Product Marketing Manager for Cards & Expenses at Payhawk, and Robbie Hadfield, General Manager for Cards & Expenses at Payhawk (and a former financial controller), to discuss why so many organisations struggle to maintain control over employee spending.

Their conclusion was simple: The issue usually isn’t the policy, it’s when the policy takes effect.

As Robbie explains:

If someone submits something, you're already in a difficult position. The spend has happened, and now you're arguing about it.

When finance only becomes involved after the transaction, the conversation shifts from prevention to dispute. Instead of guiding behaviour, the finance team ends up reviewing decisions that are already locked in. This reactive dynamic is exactly where control starts to slip.

Why most expense policies fail

Most companies already have a travel or expense policy. So far, so good.

The first problem? The document is usually available in the employee handbook, an internal wiki, or a tool like Notion. It outlines what employees can and cannot spend money on. It might even include tax guidelines and reimbursement rules.

The second problem? Documentation alone does not shape behaviour.

As Robbie explains:

You put the expense policy in the employee handbook or a tool like Notion, and no one ever reads it again.

Policies often fail because they rely on memory rather than enforcement. Employees read them once, if at all, and then move on. When they need to make a purchase on the spot, they rely on their judgment rather than referring to a policy document.

This is why finance teams often end up reviewing expenses after the fact and questioning whether something was compliant.

At that point, the spend has already happened. Finance can approve it, reject it, or request clarification. None of those options actually prevents the problem.

Expenses are a cultural signal

Expense management might seem like a small operational process, but it actually reveals a lot about how an organisation runs.

Unlike many financial processes that only involve finance professionals, expense management touches everyone. Every employee interacts with it.

Robbie sees this as a powerful signal about organisational discipline.

Expenses is one of the few processes in an organisation where every employee interacts with finance at the same level. It’s actually a great indicator of company culture.

When expense processes are messy, submissions are late, or documentation is missing, it often reflects broader operational habits. Teams that struggle with expense discipline frequently struggle with other operational processes as well.

Robbie noticed this pattern repeatedly in his time in finance roles. “Departments that run expenses well tend to run everything else well too.”

The reverse is also true. When expenses are consistently submitted late or incomplete, finance teams often see the same lack of discipline in forecasting, project management, and reporting.

That is why employee spend is more than an administrative process. It is a behavioural system that reflects how teams operate.

The old model of employee spend

Historically, many organisations treated cards as a risk. The logic was simple: If employees had access to company cards, they could potentially spend without oversight.

Robbie describes:

Cards were historically seen as risk because there were no spending controls.

To mitigate that perceived risk, many companies adopted reimbursement models instead.

Employees paid for expenses themselves and then submitted claims later. Finance reviewed the claims and decided whether to reimburse them.

On paper, this seemed safer. Finance had the final decision on whether the expense would be reimbursed. But this model created a different set of problems.

• First, it slowed down business operations. Employees often delayed purchases because they did not want to spend personal funds.
• Second, it pushed financial risk onto employees.
• And third, it created an administrative process that finance teams had to manage continuously.

Why reimbursements create bigger problems

Some organisations still believe reimbursements offer better financial control or cash flow. The thinking is that if employees pay first and the company reimburses later, the business holds onto cash longer.

But Robbie sees it differently. "Employees shouldn’t be the working capital loan of the business."

When employees regularly pay for company expenses out of pocket, it can create resentment and disengagement. Large purchases in particular can become uncomfortable for employees who do not want to carry that financial burden.

Beyond employee experience, reimbursements also create operational friction.

Finance teams must run reimbursement cycles. Employees must track receipts and submit claims, managers must approve them, and finally finance must review and process them.

This creates a recurring administrative loop that adds little strategic value.

Ironically, the reimbursement model can also create worse cash flow dynamics in some cases. Many businesses process reimbursements weekly or monthly. With corporate cards and credit facilities, companies often have several weeks before payment is due.

Late expenses distort financial visibility and make month-end reporting harder.

That means the modern card model can actually improve cash flow visibility rather than reduce it.

The shift to proactive control

The biggest shift in modern spend management is not simply the use of cards. It is the ability to control spending before the transaction happens.

Instead of treating cards as uncontrolled payment tools, finance teams can now configure spending rules directly within the payment layer.

These controls can include the following and more:

1. Merchant restrictions
2. Vendor-specific cards
3. Spending limits
4. Time restrictions
5. Geographic restrictions

When these controls are applied, the card becomes part of the control system rather than a source of risk.

For example:

• A card used for a SaaS subscription can be locked to a specific vendor.
• A travel card can be restricted to travel-related merchant categories.
• A team card can have predefined spending limits.

These rules guide behaviour before the purchase takes place.

That shift transforms expense management from a reactive review process into a proactive control system. Get it right, and it's a major breakthrough: Allowing control to happen at the payment moment, not the reconciliation stage.

Finance should not be the “bad guy”

In many organisations, finance teams are perceived as the gatekeepers of spending.

They approve budgets, review expenses, and they question transactions.

This often creates the perception that finance is slowing things down.

Robbie has experienced this firsthand in previous finance roles.:

Finance becomes the gatekeeper. The people you don't want to talk to at the Christmas party.

But this dynamic usually emerges because control systems are poorly designed.

When finance has to review every transaction after the fact, they inevitably become the team responsible for rejecting or questioning spend.

A better approach is to shift accountability earlier in the process.

Managers and department heads should approve spending decisions before purchases are made. Finance should design the control framework that supports those decisions.

When responsibility is distributed across the business, finance moves from being a gatekeeper to being a system designer.

The principle behind strong financial control

At the heart of modern spend management is a simple principle.

“You can’t achieve good financial control of the business without good business control,” Robbie says.

Financial oversight does not happen in isolation. It depends on how operational decisions are made across the organisation.

If spending decisions happen without visibility, finance will always be reacting after the fact.

If spending decisions happen within defined control frameworks, finance gains clarity and predictability.

This is why the design of spending processes matters so much.

The goal is not to add more approvals or policies. It is to create systems that enable the right decisions to happen naturally.

When that happens, finance teams spend less time investigating transactions and more time analysing and guiding business performance.

The one control gap to fix first

For finance teams looking to improve control quickly, Robbie recommends starting with a surprisingly simple area.

The dreaded: Receipt submission.

Late receipts are one of the biggest sources of friction in expense management. They delay reconciliation, create gaps in documentation, and increase month-end pressure.

Encouraging employees to submit receipts immediately after spending can dramatically improve the process.

If you get the culture of submitting expenses little and often, everything else tends to follow.

When expenses are submitted regularly rather than in large batches, finance teams gain faster visibility into spending patterns. Reviews become easier, documentation improves, and month-end workloads become more manageable.

In many cases, improving this single behaviour can unlock broader process improvements across the entire expense lifecycle.

Because ultimately, control in employee spend does not come from reviewing transactions after they happen.

It comes from shaping behaviour before they do.

What finance teams should do next

If you want better control over employee spend, start by looking at where your current process breaks. In most organisations, the problem isn’t overspending. It’s that finance only sees transactions after they happen.

Three practical steps can help you start fixing that.

1. Map when finance first sees the transaction
Look at your current process from purchase to reconciliation. When does finance first get visibility into the spend? If the answer is “after the expense is submitted,” control is already too late.

2. Move approvals closer to the moment of spending
Introduce simple approval or request processes before purchases happen. This gives managers visibility before money leaves the business and prevents awkward disputes after the fact.

3. Build a culture of immediate expense submission
Encourage employees to submit receipts as they spend, not weeks later. Small habits like capturing receipts immediately remove month-end bottlenecks and improve financial visibility across the organisation.

If you want to experience what proactive spend control looks like in practice, see how Payhawk’s Financial Controller Agent helps finance teams chase missing receipts automatically, and explore how Agent Fetch allows employees to retrieve expense information instantly without slowing down finance — book a personalised demo with an expert from Payhawk.