Expense report: what to require, what to check, and what to stop asking for

An expense report is the record an employee submits to be reimbursed for money they spent on the company's behalf: travel, meals, equipment, subscriptions bought in a hurry. It exists for two audiences at once — the employee, who wants their money back quickly, and finance, which needs enough evidence to post the cost correctly, reclaim tax where possible, and demonstrate that spending followed policy. Most expense report processes fail one of those audiences to satisfy the other.

What an expense report should contain

• Who is claiming, for which period, and the date of each expense.
• Amount, currency and the exchange rate used, if it is not the company currency.
• Category, matching your chart of accounts rather than free text.
• Business purpose in one line — the field auditors ask about most often.
• Attendees for meals and entertainment, where tax rules require it.
• Project, client or cost centre, if costs are recharged.
• Receipt image attached to the line, not emailed separately.

Check what matters, not everything

Line-by-line checking of every expense report costs more than the errors it catches. Set a receipt threshold, approve small claims automatically, and concentrate review on categories that carry tax or policy risk: entertainment, travel above a set amount, anything outside the approved booking route, and repeat claims from the same person. Sample the rest. An approver who must inspect twenty coffee receipts learns to approve without reading, which removes whatever control the review was supposed to provide.

Set a reimbursement date and publish it — for example, claims submitted by the 25th are paid with the following payroll. Most complaints about expenses are about uncertainty rather than speed.

Approval that does not become the bottleneck

1. Route by amount: small claims to the line manager, larger ones adding finance or a director, per your delegation of authority.
2. Name a deputy approver for every approver, or claims stop for two weeks each summer.
3. Reject with a reason and a route to fix it, not a silent return.
4. Post to the ledger from the same data the employee entered, rather than retyping.
5. Report monthly by category and team, so policy discussions use figures rather than anecdotes.

Ettex Forms fits the submission end: one form per claim with required fields, a receipt upload per line, and validation that catches missing purposes or categories before the claim is sent. Submitted claims arrive as structured records rather than as spreadsheets attached to email, which is what makes the monthly analysis possible at all. Where the rules themselves are unclear, the fix belongs in the expense policy rather than in the form.