Recurring expenses: The silent cash drain you can’t ignore

What are recurring expenses?

A recurring expense is a cost that reoccurs whether it's monthly, quarterly or annually.

Examples of recurring expenses include:

• Payroll costs
• Marketing subscriptions
• IT or Infrastructure subscriptions - like the hosting of your website
• Sales subscriptions - like the CRM platform you use
• Rent
• Utilities
• Insurance premiums

Identifying recurring payments and paying them on time can seem time-consuming and tricky — but it doesn't need to be.

Picture this: You run a successful online business with a highly authoritative domain critical to your digital presence and revenue. One day, your domain expires because the recurring subscription fee wasn't monitored or paid on time. Overnight, your website goes offline, and your customers can't reach you. The worst part? Someone else could purchase your domain, risking your entire online business and reputation, all because of a missed recurring payment.

The scenario above happened to one company for real and it was only luck (and the fact that no-one realised for 24 hours that the domain was free), that led to a happy end.

At Payhawk, features like our subscription spend management software make it easy to identify and track company-wide recurring payments.

Using automatic subscription detection through our sophisticated software means you don't need to manually identify recurring payments, which means you'll always pay them on time. Plus, our smart system analyses customer invoices to identify suppliers, payment frequency, and other information to make recurring payments straightforward and efficient.

The impact of recurring expenses

Let's say you have five marketing software subscriptions, but two are duplicates, and one you barely use. Without central visibility into all your subscriptions, you could easily continue paying these unnecessary costs, eating into your overall budget and impacting your cash flow.

If different departments are buying software subscriptions without proper controls, you'll quickly run into subscription sprawl. Subscriptions can be duplicated or multiply fast — and so do your costs. Even if every team needs the tool, you miss out on bulk discounts or better pricing by not consolidating spend.

Untracked recurring expenses also make financial forecasting a nightmare. You can't predict cash flow or build reliable growth budgets without visibility into regular costs. And if those expenses aren't categorised properly, you risk tax filing mistakes, missed deductions, or even compliance issues — including audits and penalties.

That's why tracking all company spending and setting clear controls and limits by department is crucial. When you know where your money's going, you can make smarter decisions, tighten forecasts, and take control. When it comes to recurring spend, it always needs to be visible, monitored, and well-managed — no exceptions.

See how Payhawk could help you automate workflows, subscription tracking, and more in the short video below.

How to categorise and track recurring expenses

Categorising your recurring expenses helps you pinpoint spending patterns, improve budgeting and forecasting, and eliminate financial surprises. But with so many methods for categorising expenses, i.e., by department, purpose, or expense type, finding a solution that automatically categorises your expenses to save you time is vital.

1. Reduce redundant subscriptions

Are your teams paying for the same tools more than once without realising?
It’s a common issue. When multiple departments manage their own software subscriptions without clear controls, costs spiral fast. At Payhawk, we make it easy to audit and manage all your recurring spend in one place so nothing slips through the cracks.

With our subscription spend management, you can quickly spot duplicates, confirm what’s still in use, and group spend by category to identify high-cost areas. You’ll get real-time visibility into all your active subscriptions — plus a % CHANGE filter that shows pricing shifts over time — making it easy to renegotiate contracts or switch to better-value options.

No more guesswork, no more overspend — just full control over every subscription, all from one place.

2. Set and adjust budgets for recurring expenses

Once you understand how much your recurring expenses add up to, you can start budgeting for them much more easily. This means no more last-minute cash transfers and no more limited future planning; instead, you can relax, knowing you have the necessary funds to cover all regular expenses.

With our historic spending data visualisation, you can filter expenses down to a granular level, i.e. by document number, SaaS tools or employee name. The biggest benefit? Now, you’ll be much better informed to make realistic budgeting decisions.

Track your business budgets with our budget-tracking software.

3. Leverage tech

If you want to spend less time managing recurring expenses and more time focusing on growth, the right tools can make all the difference. With our solution, you get complete spend visibility, reduce manual work, and control spend across your business.

You can also track, report, and export recurring expense data (to CSV or Excel formats) to keep everything running smoothly — without the admin overload.

4. Make use of expense categories

Some spend management tools only offer fixed categories for slicing and dicing spending, which can quickly make sorting and analysing expenses harder than necessary. Not every business fits neatly into those boxes.

That’s why at Payhawk, we let you pick from preset options and/or create your own so your expense categories match your company’s structure, language, and way of working. Use expense categories to tag every business cost accurately (cardholders can simply select the right option from your preset list) — without extra work for your finance team

5. Introduce digital receipt capture

To reduce fraud and keep expense records accurate, switch to digital receipt capture.
Instead of asking cardholders to enter expense details manually, they just snap a photo. This makes data capture faster, easier, and more reliable.

At Payhawk, our OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology does the rest — automatically pulling details like date, amount, and items from the receipt. Even if it’s crumpled or poorly lit, our smart tech still gets the job done.

6. Link your corporate cards to your spend management platform

If you’re using Payhawk corporate cards (virtual or physical), then our tech instantly connects them to the Payhawk spend management platform. This connectivity means you get complete visibility on real-time spending across all cards (across all your multiple entities). Plus, you can make the most of advanced spending controls, limits, and restrictions and enforce spending policies automatically.

Better recurring expense management means optimised cash flow

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, regardless of industry or size. It makes perfect sense: You need healthy cash flow to remain profitable, competitive, and agile in response to market changes.

But you need financial transparency to achieve even better cash flow control, particularly with your recurring expenses.

Understanding which spending is expected isn’t enough. You also need to make sure you pay them on time. By using our scheduled payments, you can ensure every payment is made on time, whether on the due date or choosing a specific date, helping you fully optimise your cash flow management.

Before you go

If you don’t consistently track and categorise recurring expenses, you risk losing visibility and control over your finances — and that’s never a good place to be.

Knowing what recurring expenses are coming up helps you plan cash flow, forecast growth, and avoid surprises. It also puts you in a strong position to cut costs by spotting duplicates or underused subscriptions.

And when your spend is organised, you can dig deeper into your data. Run variance analysis, benchmark performance, and stay fully accountable for every penny across every entity.

Ready to see how switching to Payhawk could transform your spend management? Request a demo to see every feature in action.