Driving Financial Efficiency in Transport: How Girteka Revolutionized Expense Management with Payhawk

For System Integrators (SIs), the shift above opens up a bigger opportunity, not just to implement tools, but to help clients build connected, intelligent finance environments that truly work together.

The Million-Dollar Problem Hiding in Your Expense Reports

If you're leading finance for a transportation company, you know the industry operates on razor-thin margins. Every efficiency matters, from fuel optimization to route planning and driver utilization.
But there's a significant cost center that often goes unaddressed in our industry: expense management.

Current research reveals the average expense report takes 20 minutes to complete, with one in five containing errors. Each error costs approximately $50 to correct. For transportation companies with thousands of drivers, these "minor inefficiencies" silently drain millions from your bottom line each year.

For finance leaders in transportation specifically, these challenges are uniquely complex:

• Managing spend across multiple currencies and VAT jurisdictions
• Controlling expenses for drivers constantly crossing borders
• Reconciling physical receipts for fuel, tolls, accommodations, and meals
• Lacking real-time visibility into fleet spending
• Overwhelming administrative workload for finance teams

These issues aren't just operational headaches—they're strategic liabilities that prevent finance from delivering the insights and controls your business needs to remain competitive.

The Girteka Challenge: Scale Meets Complexity

When we began working with Girteka, they represented the perfect case study in transportation expense management complexity. With 6,000 trucks traversing Europe and over 10,000 users submitting thousands of expense reports monthly, their paper-based processes were creating serious bottlenecks.

Their experience mirrors what I've seen across the transportation sector:

• Drivers collected paper receipts during trips
• Documentation was submitted weeks after expenses occurred
• Finance teams spent hours reconciling and correcting errors
• Cash handling created security concerns and delay reimbursements
• Month-end closing became a nightmare of incomplete documentation

For Girteka's finance leadership, this wasn't just an administrative problem—it was preventing strategic visibility into one of their largest variable cost centers.

Designing a Solution for Transportation's Unique Challenges

What makes transportation different from other industries is the combination of scale, geographic distribution, and regulatory complexity. Designing a solution required understanding the specific workflows of both drivers and finance teams.

The implementation needed to address:

• 10,000 users across multiple European countries
• Integration with multiple existing systems including telematics
• Automation across all European currencies, regulations, and VAT rules
• A solution intuitive enough for drivers to adopt while providing finance with the controls they need

Having led treasury functions and implemented financial technology solutions myself, I recognized that success would depend not just on the software itself, but on how we tailored it to Girteka's specific operational realities.

Real Partnership: The Key to Implementation Success

For CFOs and finance leaders considering similar transformations, understand this: implementing financial technology at scale isn't just about the product—it's about partnership.

Our approach with Girteka involved:

• Deep integration with their existing systems
• A carefully structured pilot program with driver representatives
• Collaboration between our technical teams and their finance department
• Ongoing refinement based on real-world feedback

This collaborative approach ensured the solution would work not just in theory, but in the challenging real-world conditions transportation companies face daily.

From Paper to Digital: A Transportation-Specific Solution

The solution we implemented transformed the expense process:

1. Drivers received company cards with appropriate spending parameters
2. Payments were made directly, eliminating cash handling and reimbursement delays
3. Receipt capture happened immediately via company-provided tablets
4. Finance gained real-time visibility into all expenses
5. Month-end reconciliation became dramatically simplified

For finance leaders, this created immediate visibility into spending patterns across the fleet. For drivers, it eliminated one of the most frustrating administrative burdens of their job.

As Roman, a professional truck driver at Girteka, explains: "At first, it took some getting used to it, like with any new thing. But now, it's comfortable. I can easily separate business and personal expenses, and it's resolved much faster when something unexpected happens. I feel more supported by the company."

Strategic Benefits for Transportation Finance Leaders

For finance leaders in transportation companies, the strategic benefits extend far beyond operational efficiency:

• Cost control: Real-time visibility into spending patterns across your fleet
• Regulatory compliance: Automatic handling of complex cross-border VAT requirements
• Financial accuracy: Elimination of error-prone manual processes
• Strategic insight: Ability to analyze spending data to identify optimization opportunities
• Resource reallocation: Finance team time redirected from administrative tasks to strategic analysis
• Enhanced employee experience: Simplified processes for drivers and administrative staff

Mindaugas Paulauskas, CEO of Girteka Transport, captures the strategic value: "Technology in logistics should empower people – not complicate their work. This project reflects our commitment to making everyday tasks easier for our drivers while building a smarter and more transparent system for the company."

Beyond Cards: Why Bank Solutions Fall Short for Transportation

In my conversations with CFOs and finance leaders in transportation, I often hear the question: "Can't we just get corporate cards from our bank?"

Having led treasury functions before joining Payhawk, I can tell you unequivocally: traditional banking solutions cannot address the unique challenges transportation companies face.

Here's why:

• Banks provide cards but lack the specialized software to manage transportation-specific workflows
• Bank solutions offer minimal integration with existing financial systems
• Card issuance often requires lengthy, manual processes unsuited to driver onboarding
• Cross-border VAT reclamation remains a manual process
• Approval workflows and spending controls lack the flexibility transportation companies need

Transportation requires specialized solutions built for the industry's unique combination of geographic distribution, regulatory complexity, and scale.

The Future: AI-Enhanced Expense Management for Transportation

For forward-thinking finance leaders in transportation, the most exciting developments lie ahead. Recently, we released our first AI agent for financial control, further transforming expense management:

• Drivers can now submit expenses through natural language conversation
• Managers approve via simple messaging interfaces
• AI automatically fills in required documentation
• Finance teams aggregate and book data with minimal intervention

This represents a significant advancement specifically valuable to transportation companies, where driver experience and administrative simplicity are paramount concerns.

How Transportation CFOs Can Drive This Transformation

If you're a CFO or finance leader in the transportation sector, consider these steps toward modernizing your expense management:

1. Assess your current costs: Calculate the true cost of your current expense process, including administrative time, error correction, and delayed VAT reclamation
2. Map your specific workflows: Understand the unique expense journeys in your organization, especially for drivers
3. Consider integration requirements: Identify how expense management connects to your existing systems
4. Evaluate specialized solutions: Look beyond banking products to solutions designed for transportation's unique challenges
5. Start with a pilot: Test new approaches with a limited group before full-scale implementation

Conclusion: Transforming Financial Operations in Transportation

The transformation we've helped Girteka achieve demonstrates what's possible when transportation companies apply specialized tools to their unique financial challenges.

A few years ago, their drivers were sorting paper receipts in truck cabins, and finance teams were drowning in administrative work. Today, both groups are supported by intelligent systems that automate previously manual processes, creating efficiencies that translate directly to improved operational performance and financial results.

For transportation companies still managing expenses manually, the opportunity is clear: modern spend management doesn't just digitize paper—it fundamentally transforms financial operations, creating strategic advantages in an industry where margins matter more than ever.

Want to learn how we can help your transportation company achieve similar results? Contact one of our experts for a transportation-specific demonstration of how Payhawk addresses the unique challenges your finance team and drivers face.