Top ways to streamline expense management across transport and logistics

There are quite a few challenges when it comes to managing spend in the transport and logistics industry. Starting with drivers, ending with vendors, and covering the whole supply chain in-between, there are so many costs to juggle.
 
That’s why efficient expense management is so critical to transport and logistics businesses like yours. Without it, you risk budget creep and general expense management chaos — and you can’t know who spent what or understand essential spending versus out-of-policy expenses and even fraud.

The seven biggest expense management challenges facing the transportation and logistics industry

At Payhawk, we’ve supported customers like Discordia, Baton, and ICP to drastically improve their spend management, digitally transform processes, and save time for finance and non-finance teams. While vastly different businesses in terms of size and setup, there are a few problems each of the businesses shared before switching to us, including:

• High-volume, high-frequency expenses, including out-of-route fuel spend, tolls, and maintenance costs
• Complex employee expense tracking: Drivers and field employees needing company funds while on the move (making traditional reimbursement processes cumbersome)
• Cross-border payments: Managing expenses across multiple currencies and regulatory environments is adding complexity to your financial workflows
• Compliance and tax requirements: VAT recovery and tax compliance require careful documentation and reporting
• Lack of real-time visibility and difficulty optimising budgets with big delays and little oversight

So how can transport and logistics businesses tackle these issues and more? Here are a few of the biggest challenges your logistics and transport company might be facing right now (along with the top ways to overcome them).

1. Cash advances & reimbursements

If you have employees travelling the road (i.e. drivers), they'll need access to funds to pay for business expenses when they're on the move. Think food, parking, repairs, etc. With so many employees travelling the length and breadth of the country or multiple countries, it can become difficult to keep track of which expense belongs to who.
 
If your drivers are using personal cards or fuel cards and collect paper receipts, they're going to struggle with expense submission and accountability. It quickly becomes almost impossible to keep accurate expense records and give out funds when needed. It also makes spend visibility across the company delayed and reimbursements unnecessarily stressful.
 
Let's say your delivery driver Steve, is shipping goods overnight. Steve needs to purchase petrol, but his fuel card has certain location restrictions, and he can't use it. Instead, he has to purchase fuel with his personal debit card, which means you'll have to reimburse him later. This scenario is already inconvenient for him; he's out of pocket. And what's more, you won't be reimbursing him very quickly as he still has to collect his receipts and manually input them into an expense report before they go through your reimbursing process.
 
In these instances, using a corporate card (pre-loaded with a monthly recurring spending limit and in-built rules) would be much swifter and more reliable for the driver.

2. Cumbersome and lengthy card issuance

Moving away from reimbursements and suddenly corporate cards can be painful, too.
 
You'll quickly find that setting up corporate cards for every employee can be a drawn-out task, particularly if you don't have cards connected to your expense management system.
 
Get instant physical and virtual cards without sacrificing control. Set limits for individuals or teams, enforce spending rules, and ensure automatic compliance — no manual checks required.
 
That's exactly what Linehaul experts Baton found in Payhawk. Nelly Dobreva, Lead of Process & Technology Centre of Excellence Lead at Baton, says:

With traditional bank cards, we lacked visibility over drivers' expenses and their need for additional funds. We had to transfer money to our employees' debit cards, but it wasn't quick. Now, with Payhawk, we can easily allow them to spend up to a certain limit from our company funds pool. With Payhawk cards, we instantly see who spent what, when, and why and then adjust spending policies as needed.

3. Expenses in different currencies

Delivery driving across countries can often lead to a list of spend requirements that covers things like currencies, cross-border payments, FX charges, and more.

Here, instead of juggling different systems for every region, European haulage giant, Discordia uses our solution to create multi-currency company cards and minimise conversion fees, leverage instant international payments without hidden banking costs, and consolidate financial reporting across multiple entities.

With a fleet of 1,500 trucks, over 2,000 drivers, customers in more than 70 countries, and a workforce of 2,400 employees, being able to spend cost-effectively across borders is vital.

4. End-of-month reporting delays and tax issues

If you’re a finance leader at a transport business dealing with VAT on fuel, tolls, and cross-border expenses, you know it adds up fast.
Here’s where our automated expense categorisation (and VAT integration with 60Dias) comes in.

Here’s how: Our automated data extraction system captures all relevant details, and 60dias converts them into tax-compliant invoices. The integration handles everything, from AEAT-certified digital receipt validation to generating complete, deductible invoices. Then, these invoices sync automatically with your Payhawk platform, making VAT recovery simple and stress-free.

5. Slow expense approvals

Picture the scene: A truck breaks down, and your driver, Mac, has no funds to pay for repairs. They need to request funds from the back office, but the transfer will take two days to arrive. As a result, the truck is stuck during this time, costing the company money.
 
The same will happen if the Mac receives a cash-only fine for which they don’t have sufficient cash. They’ll need to request the funds, then await their approval, and finally wait for the actual funds.
 
Moreover, they might have a traditional bank card that doesn’t even allow ATM withdrawals, meaning a trip to the closest bank office to receive them.
 
Not very convenient, right?
 
With a smart spend management solution that includes corporate cards & in-built controls and expense management all in one (like ours at Payhawk), the story looks very different …

• Drivers get instant access to funds when needed, without delays or paperwork.
• Instant card top-ups: The back office can load funds onto a driver’s card in seconds, keeping them moving without waiting for a bank transfer.
• Flexible ATM withdrawals: With a simple toggle, you can enable or disable ATM access, ensuring your drivers can withdraw cash only when necessary.
• Real-time expense tracking: Every transaction is visible immediately, eliminating guesswork and back-and-forth approvals.
• Custom spend controls: Set limits, block specific merchants, and automate approvals to keep spending under control.
• No more stuck trucks, delayed payments, or unnecessary detours — just fast, controlled access to funds when it matters most.

6. Lost financial documents

Manual receipt collection means you have to trust every employee to track every expense on the road. If they forget a receipt, you and your finance team are left chasing transactions, wasting time on reconciliation instead of focusing on what matters.

Nelly at European linehaul company, Baton, describes how this looked before switching to Payhawk.

When drivers were returning to their home country for weekly rest or vacation, they had to take all the receipts they collected for the last four weeks to the office. As a result, many receipts got lost, and accountants spent a lot of time matching receipts with registered expenses.

7. Manual tasks for both the drivers and the finance teams

Manually managing any aspect of the expense management process is time-consuming. From collecting the initial receipts and copying expense data into the expense reports to approving submissions and reimbursing employees.
 
Manually overseeing any of this process makes it inefficient and riddled with human errors.
 
But it doesn't have to be this way. Tsvetomir Uzunov, CFO, Discordia recalls the change since moving to Payhawk:

We've boosted employee productivity by over four times and expect an even greater impact as our fleet grows. Payhawk's automation has significantly cut processing time and reduced the errors that came with manual expense handling.

Learn more about time-saving finance tips and automations in the short video below.

Techniques for streamlining expense management

So, how can you streamline expense management at your logistics company? Here are some advanced techniques to consider.

Expense tracking automation

When employees spend company funds on the road, clear approval processes keep everything running smoothly (and smart automation technology keeps everything running at speed). Without them, expenses pile up, and finance teams waste time chasing approvals.

With automation, you can eliminate manual back-and-forth. Instead of employees tracking down the right approver, custom workflows handle it automatically, saving time and keeping approvals efficient.

Set custom approval rules that match your company’s structure, no matter how complex. Need a senior manager to sign off on anything over £500? Done. Want approvals based on budget, category, or department? Easy.

And with an easy-to-use workflow designer, you can stay in control while ensuring that the right person signs off every expense without any hassle.

Real-time spend visibility

Good decisions start with accurate, real-time data. Without it, you'll end up guessing where money is going and chasing down receipts.
With full real-time expense visibility, you can log in and instantly see who spent what, where, and when — no waiting, no surprises. As soon as someone makes a payment, it's right there, ready to track.

Need to analyse spending by department? Check. Want to adjust limits based on actual spending habits? Easy. You can even spot trends and flag issues before the expense document is uploaded.

And it's not just for finance. Budget owners, department heads, and project managers all have instant access to spend insights, so they can track budgets, make proactive decisions, and stay in control without chasing down reports.

Smart cost control for transport & logistics

Keeping costs in check is critical in transport and logistics, where multiple moving parts can make spending hard to track. But how do you maintain control while keeping processes efficient and teams autonomous? The answer lies in smart expense management technology.

With advanced card controls, finance teams can set custom spending limits to prevent overspending, restrict usage by time, category, or location — allowing fuel purchases while blocking online shopping — and ensure compliance across teams without micromanaging.

Automated reconciliation with seamless integrations

Manual reconciliation is slow and inefficient. With the right expense management tool, businesses can integrate directly with their ERP and accounting software, ensuring automatic reconciliation for real-time, accurate expense tracking. This also improves visibility across the company and simplifies reporting without the need for manual data entry.

Key features for transport & logistics expense management

Choosing the right expense management solution means finding one that streamlines processes without adding complexity. Prioritising features that make tracking and controlling spend easier, faster, and more efficient is key to keeping operations running smoothly.

• Mobile app: Employees are on the move, which means a cloud-based expense solution with a user-friendly mobile app is a must.
• OCR: Optical character recognition drastically improves the time it takes to submit an expense. The tech automatically extracts important expense data, such as date, amount, and information, saving the employee a huge amount of time.
• Receipt collection: Digitally capturing receipts eliminates the need to collect them and turn them in to the head office to ensure prompt reimbursement.
• Advanced card controls: Card controls help enhance visibility and control over all spending throughout the supply chain, making logistics budgets easier to manage end-to-end.
• Automated expense categorisation: With funds being spent across the business, spanning multiple departments, it can be easy to pile all expenses together. But that's detrimental to expense reporting and spend visibility. Using automated expense categorisation lets you better align your expenses to your specific business needs.
• Automated reconciliation: Instead of manually reconciling your accounts, which is grossly time-consuming and inaccurate, automatic reconciliation frees up that time, improves compliance and gets you audit-ready.
• Real-time spend visibility and budget tracking: Analysing spending in real time and tracking budgets per project or department makes forecasting and financial planning easy.
• Easy-to-use: Find an intuitive solution. A user-centric design makes tech adoption quicker across the company.
• Customisable: Although there will be many similarities, no two logistics companies are the same, so you need a flexible and customisable expense solution. You need to be able to customise workflows to suit your organisational structure, add multiple locations and entities to the group dashboard, and customise card controls to control spending tightly.
• VAT recovery: Thanks to our integration with 60 días, we can process all our clients' receipts and contact the suppliers who issued them in order to obtain complete invoices so that they can recover the VAT.

Success stories: enhancing operational efficiency through expense management

With a growing fleet of 1,500 vehicles and over 2,000 drivers, Discordia needed to find a solution that improved the driver experience with expense management and helped keep tight control over costs across its 70 locations.
 
Before Payhawk, the logistics company struggled to achieve spend visibility, which meant opportunities to save money or cut costs fell by the wayside.
 
But now, Bulgaria's largest transportation and logistics company has significantly cut processing time and reduced the errors that came with manual expense handling.
 
Implementing Payhawk has been a game-changer for everyone at the organisation, particularly the Discordia drivers like Petyo Kozarov:
 
For me, Payhawk is a big win because now I always have designated company money when I'm on the road. I don't use personal funds to pay parking, tolls, or fines. And I don't have to do extra reporting — with Payhawk's mobile app, I take pictures of receipts, and they go straight to the office.
 
CFO Tsvetomir continues, describing how useful Payhawk really is for ensuring employee wellbeing:

Now, if someone falls ill on the road, we can send them money and put them up in a hotel immediately. And with the money, they can go to the doctor, which also helps. Imagine being somewhere in the world and experiencing such an incident, but without any resources, it would be such a bad situation.

Read the full Discordia case study.

Achieving excellence in expense management for logistics

In transport and logistics, every second and every pound, dollar, or euro matters. Keeping up with fast-moving operations means having a spend management solution that works at your pace — and one that simplifies financial processes while giving you full control, real-time visibility, and greater efficiency.

With the right tools in place, you can cut admin time, prevent overspending, and stay ahead in a competitive industry.

Ready to optimise your transport and logistics expenses? Discover how Payhawk can transform your financial operations today, request an expert demo.