Finance departments are spending less time correcting expense claims and more time on strategic work as businesses improve compliance and accelerate approvals, according to new research from expense management platform Capture Expense.
Its 2026 Expense Trends Report analysed 978,036 expense claims worth more than £49mn across 631 organisations between January 2025 and June 2026, offering a snapshot of how companies are changing the way they manage employee spending.
The findings point to a marked improvement in administrative efficiency. Rejected claims fell from 25,731 to 22,866 year-on-year, while the overall rejection rate declined from 2.91 per cent to 2.26 per cent, despite the platform processing claims from a larger number of organisations.
Approval times also improved sharply. The proportion of claims approved immediately rose from 2.6 per cent in 2025 to 26.8 per cent in 2026. Meanwhile, the share taking more than 30 days to receive approval plunged from 26.6 per cent to just 3.4 per cent.
The figures suggest companies are becoming better at preventing errors before claims reach managers and finance departments, reducing the need for repeated checks, corrections and requests for missing information. Faster processing can also mean employees receive reimbursements sooner, easing frustration over out-of-pocket business expenses.
James Rowell, founder of Capture Expense, said: “Organisations are simply getting better at this. Employees understand what a compliant claim looks like, systems are catching problems earlier, and approvers aren’t wading through the same volume of avoidable admin.”
The most common reasons for rejection nevertheless remain relatively basic. Missing mileage documentation accounted for 1,571 rejected claims, while 1,545 were turned down because receipts were missing or invalid. Incorrect expense categories or VAT treatment were responsible for a further 1,509 rejections.
Capture Expense said the pattern reflected a broader move away from reactive administration towards preventative compliance, with digital systems increasingly identifying problems at the point a claim is submitted rather than after it has entered the approval process.
Callum Beckwith, technical lead at the company, said: “What we’re seeing is less about isolated fixes and more about organisations building compliance into the moment a claim is created, rather than catching problems later. That shift from correction to prevention is exactly what we’d expect to see as digital processes continue to mature.”
Despite the progress, the report found that businesses still face persistent weaknesses in the quality of expense submissions. About 2.68 per cent of claims were submitted without a receipt attached, while 7.98 per cent contained vague or incomplete descriptions.
Those shortcomings can create disproportionate administrative work. Finance staff may have to chase employees to establish what a purchase was for, determine the correct accounting treatment or identify the business purpose behind a transaction.
Rowell said: “Finance teams rarely spend their time investigating fraud. Far more often, they’re simply trying to work out what a claim was for and where they should assign it. Getting the basics right, consistently, is still the biggest lever most organisations have at their disposal.”
He added: “The real story in this year’s data is that organisations are moving beyond just processing expenses. Faster approvals, lower rejection rates and greater use of automation are giving finance teams better visibility and more time to focus on the insights that drive business decisions.”
For finance leaders under pressure to improve productivity and control costs, the findings suggest that relatively routine administrative processes can offer meaningful efficiency gains. Better expense data can also give businesses a clearer picture of spending patterns, helping them identify costs and inform decisions.
The challenge now is to sustain the improvement while addressing the remaining gaps in documentation and claim descriptions. Automation may speed up approvals, but the quality of the information employees provide remains central to effective financial control.
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