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Improving expense management for financial forecasting and control: A Finance-Procurement alignment approach — Executive summary

06/16/2025 By and

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This executive summary introduces a five-part series for finance, procurement and operational leaders who aim to bring greater control, transparency and predictive power to employee-driven expense management, particularly travel, reimbursement and card spend.

While often treated as an administrative task, expense management has direct implications for budgeting, financial forecasting and working capital planning. Yet many organizations still rely on disconnected tools, reactive workflows and inconsistent policies that limit their ability to turn T&E expense data into financial intelligence. Common challenges include the following:

  • Delayed visibility into employee spend and reimbursement obligations
  • Disconnected approval workflows and budget misalignment
  • Lack of real-time integration with forecasting and planning systems
  • Fragmented expense policies and inconsistent enforcement across departments
  • Insufficient performance metrics to evaluate policy compliance and financial impact

This series follows the structured methodology outlined in our in-depth guide to Aligning Finance and Procurement and expands it to focus specifically on expense management as a critical source of financial insight and operational control. Over five detailed phases, we help organizations shift from reactive expense reporting to a proactive, insight-driven approach where expense data becomes a foundational input into forecasting, budgeting and strategic decision making.

Aligning Finance and Procurement

Each week, we will explore one of five foundational phases that help organizations break down silos, align priorities and build lasting capabilities for smarter, more accountable expense management.

This series is not intended to provide the answer — it is intended to start the conversation between finance and procurement.

A Glimpse into the 5 Phases

Phase 1: Understanding the expense management foundations

Before collaboration can be improved, finance and procurement must be aligned on the role of expense management in organizational planning and control. Finance typically seeks predictability and compliance, while procurement focuses on usability, policy design and vendor enablement, including travel platforms and card programs.

This phase examines:

  • How differing objectives around expense policy, reporting and budgeting impact financial accuracy.
  • Why expense categories must be standardized and integrated early into planning cycles.
  • The risk of recurring spend patterns, such as unchecked travel or decentralized bookings, undermining cost control.

This opening phase lays the groundwork for cross-functional alignment by showing how T&E spend, when structured correctly, can contribute to stronger forecasting discipline and financial transparency.

(Don not miss the full article on this phase, starting next week)

Phase 2: Identifying common misalignments in expense management

Even mature organizations experience breakdowns that distort expense data and weaken decision making. This phase surfaces recurring disconnects across processes, policies and systems.

It focuses on:

  • Inconsistent expense classification and limited spend categorization across business units.
  • Bottlenecks in approval workflows that delay reimbursements and skew monthly close.
  • Manual processes and disconnected platforms limiting real-time budget tracking.
  • Expense reports that fail to map clearly to budget lines, projects or departments.

These disconnects erode not just financial predictability but also procurement’s ability to support travel compliance, card policy enforcement and end-user guidance. Recognizing these misalignments is essential to building a more coordinated, accountable process.

(Look out for the full article on this phase, available June 23)

Phase 3: Structuring the collaboration framework

Expense management improvement is not a systems issue; it is a collaboration challenge. This phase defines how finance, procurement and department leaders can jointly build a more agile, transparent expense management model.

Topics covered include:

  • Establishing shared roles and responsibilities between FP&A, procurement and budget owners.
  • Creating feedback loops around policy effectiveness, employee behavior and spend control.
  • Structuring routine check-ins and reporting cycles to align forecasts with actual expense trends.
  • Developing common language and KPIs to measure both cost control and policy adherence.

By moving from siloed control to shared stewardship, organizations can transform T&E expense management into a forward-looking capability that reinforces budget accountability and policy effectiveness.

(Look out for the full article on this phase, available June 30)

Phase 4: Leveraging technology for expense intelligence

While collaboration lays the foundation, integrated technology unlocks scale and insight. This phase looks at how digital platforms can streamline expense capture, improve compliance and enhance visibility across employee-driven spend.

Key focus areas include:

  • Automating approvals, policy enforcement and expense reconciliation.
  • Real-time integration of expense data with ERP and planning systems.
  • AI tools to flag anomalies, detect out-of-policy claims and provide spend forecasts.
  • Mobile-first solutions that improve employee compliance without adding friction.

With the right digital tools in place, organizations can move beyond operational tracking to strategic visibility, turning T&E expenses into real-time signals for financial decision making.

(Look out for the full article on this phase, available July 7)

Phase 5: Sustaining impact with shared KPIs and review mechanisms

To ensure ongoing alignment, finance and procurement must jointly define how success is measured and how performance is reviewed. This phase builds the foundation for continuous improvement in expense management.

It includes:

  • KPIs that reflect both financial health and operational discipline, e.g., average time to reimburse, policy compliance rates, forecast variance on travel spend.
  • Dashboards that allow real-time monitoring of expenses against budget, by function or by region.
  • Periodic cross-functional reviews to recalibrate thresholds, limits and usage trends.
  • Clear ownership and accountability across departments to reinforce compliance culture.

With shared metrics and transparent tracking, organizations can institutionalize control and collaboration, ensuring that T&E expenses remain aligned with broader financial priorities.

(Look out for the full article on this phase, available July 14)

Why alignment matters

Expense management is one of the most visible and often underleveraged categories of spend. When structured well, it becomes a gateway to better forecasting, stronger financial discipline and improved employee accountability. When poorly managed, it becomes a blind spot that distorts financial plans and undermines cost control.

In today’s climate of cost pressure, distributed workforces and increasing scrutiny on discretionary spend, organizations are rethinking how they manage employee-driven expenses. Modern platforms are evolving quickly, with AI capabilities that automate classification, detect compliance issues and enhance real-time visibility. 

These innovations help organizations move beyond administrative processing into more predictive, agile financial control. As a result, expense management is becoming a critical area for finance and procurement leaders to align on for stronger forecasting, compliance and planning accuracy.

Each phase of this series delivers a practical step forward, from aligning stakeholder priorities to building the right workflows, selecting enabling technology and defining shared metrics for sustainable oversight.

Final comment

Improving T&E expense management is not just about avoiding overspend or closing books faster it is about building a more predictive and collaborative financial culture. As explored throughout this series, many of the barriers to better control are not technological but structural: misaligned priorities, fragmented processes and limited visibility.

But these challenges are solvable. With a shared framework, clearly defined roles and data-driven tools, finance and procurement leaders can elevate expense management into a strategic discipline, one that strengthens forecasting, supports liquidity and drives enterprise-wide accountability.

Next up:
Phase 1 – Understanding the Foundations: Aligning Intent, Data and Priorities in Expense Management

More in the Finance-Procurement alignment series:

Strengthening cash flow management and liquidity