You know the feeling: that one ambiguous charge on the corporate credit card statement that triggers an investigation. It could be "AMAZON MKTPLACE PMTS" or a nameless vendor code.
The initial cost of the expense isn't the issue; the real cost is the unproductive time your team spends just to answer one simple question: "What was this for?".
This time-wasting "chase cycle" is not a minor annoyance—it's the first symptom of a process failure that actively drains your budget.
The Hidden Cost of the 'Chase Cycle'
When your expense process relies on employee memory and manual reconciliation, every ambiguous charge forces your finance team into a disruptive cycle:
- Spotting the ambiguity: The controller or AP clerk identifies a vague transaction on the statement or bank feed.
- Launching the investigation: They must manually pull the transaction detail and hunt down the employee via email, Slack, or direct message for clarification.
- The delay: The employee is traveling, forgets, or simply prioritizes their primary job over the task of financial coding, stretching a 30-second clarification into a week-long effort.
- The compromise: Often, the finance team must guess the expense category or resort to the overused "Miscellaneous" code, compromising the integrity of the data.
This is a disastrous workflow that converts simple expense management into costly forensic accounting.
Quantifying the Time Drain
The time lost to this manual chasing and coding escalates dramatically as your organization grows:
- Small businesses (1–50 employees) spend roughly 4 hours per month just on manual categorization.
- Medium-sized businesses (51–250 employees) lose over 12 hours per month, delaying financial closure and increasing administrative costs.
Even correcting individual expense reports is time-consuming, with complex reports like reimbursements or vendor payments taking up to 20 minutes of manual processing time.
The Sage Expense Management Solution: Making the Question Obsolete
You need a solution that eliminates the manual dependency and the time sink.
Sage Expense Management (formerly Fyle) is designed to shift your focus from chasing history to automating the present, making the question "What was this for?" obsolete:
Instant Purchase Alerts for Credit Cards
Our software integrates directly with your existing business credit cards. You bypass the 48–72 hour bank delays and gain instant visibility into card spend.
When an employee swipes a card, they receive an instant text message notifying them of the charge. They simply reply to the text with a photo of the receipt, right when they have it in hand, achieving up to 5x faster receipt collection.
AI-Based Auto-Categorization
Our AI uses OCR to instantly extract key details (Amount, Date, Merchant) and auto-fill the expense report details, often eliminating the need for manual categorization entirely.
By automating receipt capture and categorization at the point of purchase, you eliminate the chase cycle, freeing your team to focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.
Reclaiming Your Finance Team's Time
The cost of asking "What was this for?" is thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours each year, and it has a direct, negative impact on your employees and your financial data.
Moving to an automated, real-time solution is the essential first step toward reclaiming that time and building a transparent, compliant, and efficient financial process.
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