UK firms speed up expense claims as rejections fall

Capture Expense has published research suggesting UK organisations are improving the speed and accuracy of expense claim processing. The findings are based on nearly one million claims submitted across 631 organisations.

The study examined 978,036 expense claims worth more than GBP £49 million and found that rejection rates fell even as claim volumes increased. Rejected claims declined year on year from 25,731 to 22,866, while the rejection rate dropped from 2.91% to 2.26%.

Approval times also improved sharply. Immediate approvals rose from 2.6% of claims to 26.8%, while the share of claims taking more than 30 days to gain approval fell from 26.6% to 3.4%.

The figures point to changes in how organisations handle compliance checks before claims reach managers and finance teams. Fewer claims appear to require follow-up, correction or requests for extra information, reducing the manual work involved in processing staff expenses.

The data indicates that employees are becoming more familiar with company expense policies and that checks built into digital systems are identifying errors earlier in the submission process.

Among the remaining causes of rejection, missing mileage documentation was the most common, accounting for 1,571 claims. Another 1,545 claims were rejected because of missing or invalid receipts, while 1,509 were turned down because of incorrect category selection or VAT treatment.

These figures suggest that while overall processing is improving, routine documentation and classification issues still account for a significant share of avoidable errors.

James Rowell, Founder, 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."

Process shift

The research presents these changes as part of a wider shift in finance operations from correcting mistakes after submission to preventing them when a claim is created. That approach relies on organisations embedding policy checks into software workflows rather than leaving managers or finance staff to spot problems later.

Callum Beckwith, Technical Lead, Capture Expense, 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."

The data nonetheless points to ongoing weaknesses in claim quality. Around 2.68% of claims were submitted without a receipt attached, and 7.98% included vague or incomplete descriptions. Both issues can slow approval, create uncertainty over the nature of spending and make later accounting treatment more difficult.

This matters because expense management remains a high-volume administrative process for many finance departments. Even where fraud is not the main concern, incomplete records can create extra work in coding, reviewing and reconciling spending.

Rowell added: "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."

The report covers claims submitted between January 2025 and June 2026, offering a large sample of business expense activity across the UK. With almost one million claims in the dataset, it provides a broad view of common operational problems such as missing receipts, unclear descriptions and miscategorised spending.

For finance teams, the trend suggests that improvements in employee compliance and system-led validation may be reducing time spent on routine corrections. Faster approvals could also shorten reimbursement times for staff, helping reduce frustration around out-of-pocket spending.

At the same time, the findings indicate that gains in speed do not remove the need for basic controls. Missing documentation and incomplete information continue to affect thousands of claims.

Rowell said: "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."