Employees are routinely left out of pocket by outdated expenses systems and it’s hurting both morale and business efficiency. According to Weavr research, 81% of employees have waited over a month to be reimbursed, and 63% have missed out on payments altogether. This article explores why the traditional reimburse-and-review model fails and how embedded finance—particularly company expense cards—can eliminate these pain points for SaaS platforms, HR software, and accounting tools. Discover how you can deliver seamless, flexible expense management directly within your existing product.
The old way of handling reimbursements serves no-one: it leaves a trail of admin for businesses – including your potential customers – and a bitter taste with their employees. However, with embedded finance capabilities comes an opportunity; the chance to create and serve up a much more desirable alternative expense management model for new and existing subscribers – and a competitive edge for your SaaS platform.
Does expense management work? What Weavr research found…
“It’s just the way we’ve always done it…”
Even though they are mostly unloved, are a hassle to deal with, and deliver no real business value, some processes remain remarkably resistant to meaningful change. Recent research suggests that expenses management falls firmly within this category.
Embedded finance specialists, Weavr, invited 250 UK employees to comment on their experiences at the sharp end of expense management. Standout findings included the following:
- 81%: the proportion of UK employees who have experienced being out of pocket with works expenses for over a month
- 63%: the proportion of UK employees who have claimed business expenses, but never got their money back. Among field workers, this climbs to 76%.
- >£100 lost a quarter of workers have lost more than this amount because employers have failed to reimburse them.
It seems that if ever there was a business process that’s both unloved and overdue for change, then this is it.
Where does the problem lie? The faultlines in every step of the process…
If all that expenses management needed was a couple of tweaks to optimise, there would be little of interest to developers. But in reality, evidence suggests that the issue is systemic, with problems arising for users at every stage of the process flow:
The Spend Stage: “What exactly am I entitled to?”
What can I claim back – and under what circumstances? The minutiae on all of this can easily get lost in the voluminous onboarding package new employees are typically presented with, and the endless to-and-fro of messages from HR and finance. Two thirds of employees haven’t read their company’s travel and expenses policy. Half of firms don’t even bother checking if their staff understand the rules. Little wonder there’s so much confusion.
The Claim Stage: “In which pocket did I leave that receipt!?”
Weavr found that 40% of employees haven’t bothered submitting one or more claims in the past – and have lost money as a result. This may be surprising at first glance; but less so once you appreciate the rigmarole that comes with submitting a claim. There’s the form filling (very often demanding the who, what, where, and why for every item), and of course, the need to gather together receipts to include proof of any claim. Employees procrastinate. They submit their claims late. And this tardiness causes delay at the processing end.
The Review Stage: “Please explain which client account this entertainment claim is linked to?”
Employees often feel interrogated or second-guessed by standard checks, and frustrated by the hold-ups they seem to cause. Meanwhile, especially when procrastinated claims have arrived on their desks in large batches, and need to be dealt with in time for month-end, they are difficult for supervisors to analyse in any detail.
The Correction Stage: “Sorry – you’ve missed a box. Could you look at the form again?”
One report suggested that one in five expense reports contain errors, and it takes 18 minutes on average to correct each one. Corrections inevitably entail email ping-pong: potentially highly-paid finance professionals and departmental heads, clarifying claims concerning what amount to trivial levels of cash.
The Approval Stage: “Any news yet?”
More than 20% of employees told Weavr that they struggle to track the status of their claims; a source of significant frustration. And when dealing with chase-ups, if finance team members are waiting for another tier of approval, it prevents them supplying those employees with any kind of meaningful update.
The Reimbursement Stage: “So when will it actually hit my account?”
Everything is agreed. The employee should be reimbursed their expenses. But there’s still a wait for the next payment run, for the accounts payable team to work through their to-do list, or for someone to realise that this request has somehow fallen through the cracks. And it’s usually a delay that employees can ill-afford. Two thirds of employees surveyed by Weavr reported an adverse impact on their financial health due to their employers’ handling of expenses. 12% said this happens “often” or “all the time”.
The takeaway for existing platforms and product developers: From the business-employee perspective, expense claims processes are problematic at every level. Business decision-makers will be all-too aware of this. If your company is in the business of building better workflows to fix broken systems, expenses management is a prime area to focus on.
The answer: Creating a seamless, smarter process – and a sharper edge for your product offering
How do you fix a problem like expenses management? It’s not by tinkering with (or even attempting to automate) a fundamentally flawed system. It’s by doing what comes as second nature in SaaS development: building out an alternative that’s seamless, smarter, and speaks directly to the user needs. And it’s not necessarily just in expenses software where the point of need arises: it’s also across accounting software, business travel tools, project management, and ERPs, where you’ll find employees planning and operating the activities that incur expenses.
Enter company expense cards, a new model for planning and managing expenses that’s embedded into the non-banking software teams are already using. It eliminates the need for each of the flawed workflow stages detailed above. In their place is a process that keeps your business subscribers in control, but which empowers their employees to make the right transactions at the right time – with zero personal outlay.
Expense cards key features – and how they make a difference
- Flexibility. The model makes it possible for your customers to generate and assign credit or debit cards to employees, enabling them to draw from company funds instead of their personal money – but within a framework of spending controls set by the company.
- Familiarity. Underpinned by Visa or Mastercard, employees get a familiar user experience.
- Customised control. Finance teams can set customised controls to match their employee spend policy. This includes authorisation limits on individual purchases or overall, rules for expenditure categories, specific vendors, or modes of expenditure.
- Empowerment. Employees have the autonomy to spend on what they need, when they need it, without being interrogated or second-guessed after the fact, and without being personally out-of-pocket.
- Visibility. Employers using the model get real-time accurate visibility of employee spend via a central dashboard, insights into specific categories of expenditure, as well as the ability to fine-tune expenses policies, without having to bombard employees with a fresh round of lengthy small print each time.
Filling the expenses management gap: SaaS providers are in prime position
The appetite for new, more streamlined approaches to expenses is healthy; something that’s illustrated by the growth of standalone fintechs specialising in card issuance. However, this approach can often be a less-than-optimal fit for employer needs.
Not least, with both banking sector incumbents and fintechs, the posting of significant collateral is sometimes a prerequisite for an expense card program, thereby ruling out much of the SME market. The ability to design and manage spend controls, and add their own policies and branding is not always as granular as many companies would wish. And if the system has to be layered on top of core financial and HR systems, it can introduce complexity (and integration woes) that few companies welcome.
Against this backdrop comes an opportunity for SaaS companies to do what they do best: build a more customisable, accessible, and easier-to-integrate alternative.
Expenses management and your platform: Embedded finance provides the route to viability
Embedded finance gives you the chance to to integrate expense card functionality – without your SaaS business having to morph into a fintech.
Through Weavr you can access a complete pre-built expenses management solution, fully supported by our embedded payments experts. You can build out precisely the expenses management capabilities your customers need, rapidly, cost-effectively, and with all licensing and regulation elements taken care of by us.
The result? Your subscribers can finally get access to customisable, employee-friendly and financially viable expenses management functionality: accessible via YOUR platform – and without having to add to their tech stack. For your business comes the opportunity to address a significant customer pain point – and create a valuable competitive edge.
Learn more about our expenses management solution here.
Ready to offer a smarter way to manage expenses?
Book a short call with one of our experts to see how you can embed expense card functionality into your platform—without becoming a fintech.
👉 Talk to an expert
