It’s Friday afternoon, and your finance team just found another out-of-policy expense buried in someone's report. Maybe it's a $600 supply purchase without pre-approval, or fuel bought on a weekend with no receipts. These surprises don’t just hurt your wallet, they undermine trust in your cost reports.
In construction, the issue is real — tight budgets, shifting priorities, and field teams who aren’t always thinking about policy. By the time violations are found, damages are done: budgets are overspent, clean-up takes time, and your financial data is unreliable.
That’s why we built real-time policy enforcement into our platform Sage Expense Management (formerly Fyle). Instead of reviewing reports after the spend, our platform checks compliance up front — when the transaction is logged. If something’s off, the employee and approver are alerted immediately. No surprises. No overspend.
Why Real-Time Policy Enforcement Matters In Construction
In fast-paced environments like construction, spend decisions are made on the go. A foreman grabs supplies. A crew lead books last-minute travel. A supervisor fills up fuel.
But when policies aren’t enforced at the time of spend:
- Budgets get exceeded without warning
- Finance discovers issues too late to fix
- Employees repeat mistakes without knowing they’ve broken policy
Manual reviews at month-end aren’t enough. You need a system that flags violations before they become problems.
How Sage Expense Management Enforces Expense Policies In Real Time
The platform lets you set custom expense policies — then enforces them automatically when expenses are created, submitted, or reviewed.
Here’s How It Works
- An employee submits or logs an expense
- The platform checks the entry against your company’s rules (like amount limits, merchant restrictions, missing receipts, etc.)
- If a violation is detected, the expense is flagged instantly and a message is shown to both the employee and the approver
- Approvers can’t miss it: violations are highlighted visually in their dashboard
- Finance can review all flagged expenses in a single place, along with reason, resolution, and audit trail
No delays. No missed flags. No back-and-forth at month-end.
Setting Up Policies In Sage Expense Management (It’s Flexible)
You can create multiple, layered policies based on:
- Amount limits (e.g., “Meals must be under $50”)
- Merchant or category restrictions (e.g., block entertainment or personal expenses)
- Receipt requirements (e.g., “Receipts required above $25” or “For hotel expenses”)
- Mileage documentation rules
- Role, project, department, or business unit
Each policy can be:
- Applied to specific user groups, roles, or departments
- Blocking (cannot submit) or non-blocking (warn and proceed)
- Customized with explanations or exception handling (like allowing submission with justification)
Finance teams can view all policy violations in one place, with full context on who submitted them, what went wrong, and when it happened.
What This Looks Like In Practice
Let’s say a site supervisor logs a $700 supply purchase using a company card.
- The platform checks the category, vendor, and amount
- If the purchase exceeds the pre-set limit for unapproved vendors
- A violation is flagged instantly
- The supervisor sees the warning and adds a justification
- The report goes to the project manager with the violation clearly highlighted
- Finance sees the full trail — no chasing, no surprises
Benefits For Construction Companies
- Catch risky spend early – Know immediately if someone goes over-budget or breaks policy
- Enforce rules automatically – No manual audits or policy policing
- Give visibility to the right people – PMs and finance see violations as they happen]
- Save time and avoid back-and-forth – No need to follow up for missing receipts or explanations
- Stay compliant and audit-ready – Full violation logs and workflows are always tracked
Ready To Stop Out-Of-Policy Spending Before It Starts?
The Sage Expense Management platform helps construction finance teams catch issues early, while there’s still time to act. No more waiting until month-end to fix what could’ve been flagged at the time of spend.
Instead of finding mistakes during reconciliation, you can catch them the moment they happen, with clear visibility for everyone involved, from field staff to project managers to finance.
Whether it’s missing receipts, overspending, or category restrictions, our platform flags it, explains it, and helps your team fix it on the spot.
