Rejected expense claims usually come down to the same core issues—vague descriptions, missing or mismatched receipts, late submissions, and incomplete details. These small mistakes create bigger problems: approval delays, reduced visibility, audit risks, and slower reimbursements. Most of this is preventable with clearer guidance and better checks at the point of submission, which is exactly where Capture Expense helps.
Depending on where you sit in your organisation, you might have different views on expense claims. As an employee, you probably think they are fantastic, never paying for work-related expenses directly from your own pocket. If you work in finance, it might be another story. Because the reality is, while most know and follow your expense policies to a T, there will be a select few whose claims you are consistently rejecting.
And those frequent incorrect claims create a host of problems. Rejected claims come with a whole host of challenges, wasting valuable resources that could be used to grow your business rather than stall it.
In this post, we’ll highlight the likely culprits behind most rejected expense claims, using data from our Expense Trends report to show what teams are missing and their wider impact.
Why are expense claims rejected?
To understand where teams are going wrong when it comes to expense claims, let’s first start with why claims are often rejected, using our latest expense report to uncover the trends actually impacting you.
Vagueness
Out of over 371,000 claims we analysed, we found that 76% of rejected claims were due to vagueness or incomplete information. That’s things like sections left blank or filled with the dreaded “as discussed earlier”. Unfortunately, this figure shows that it’s more just the occasional oversight and signals an alarming number of gaps in the expense submission process—from how policies are communicated to teams all the way to how they submit expenses.
Missing or mismatched receipts
They say no one gets into finance to chase receipts, but the reality is, it’s a real issue for many businesses. 18% of rejected claims were missing VAT receipts or included missing documents within a batch, while another 16% were declined because the receipts simply didn’t match the claim. While missing a receipt may seem like a small issue, the more frequent the mistake, the bigger the issue for those handling approvals. After all, how many times do you hear “I’ll do it when I get back to my desk,” and wait days until the claim actually comes through?
Late claims
Timeliness is another issue when it comes to expense claims and why they are rejected. Another factor that cropped up repeatedly in the rejected claims we analysed was that claims were submitted too late (13%). It doesn’t just create issues for your people making the claim (as who doesn’t want to be reimbursed?), but for your finance teams who have the task of relaying the information and then handling the gaps in reporting in time for audit. It’s more than just forgetting to expense a receipt until the end of the month; the frequent delays complicate reporting and reimbursement, creating a headache for your expense team.
Incomplete claims
The small details—like not remembering the exact amount, the amount of miles travelled, or even who the claim relates to—all play a crucial role in your audit trails and project attribution. While it’s likely not done out of ill intent, most employees simply don’t realise the manual work or scrutiny that incomplete claims can trigger, especially when estimated figures come into the mix. From the 13% of claims rejected due to missing descriptions or client names to missing trip information following closely behind at 11%, our report shows that incomplete claims aren’t an isolated issue, but repetitive errors made long before your finance teams ever see the claims.
All these trends point to the same underlying (and thankfully, avoidable) issue: a lack of built-in guidance and checks at the point of submission that makes workplace spend reactive rather than refined. Without automated validation or policy enforcement, it’s a continuous cycle of incorrect data funnelling through to finance, with every claim adding to the loss of visibility and control over your expense data.
What’s the result of rejected expense claims?
So, we’ve highlighted the most common culprits for rejected expense claims, but what are the actual results of them? It’s more than just time wasted chasing little details or looking for receipts; it can have a real impact on culture, confidence, and day-to-day operations.
Approval bottlenecks
A rejected claim here and there might not seem like a huge concern. But over time, they can build up—quickly. When your finance team is spending hours chasing missing information and sourcing receipts, it takes them away from their everyday tasks – like approving claims in the first place. Approval bottlenecks that don’t just impact the rejected claims but also the ones that are approval-ready, too.
From the claims in our data set, we found that only 2.6% were approved immediately, which means no double-checking of details or filling in the gaps. The rest took days, weeks, or even longer. While there was a significant increase in the number of claims approved after 30+ days (27%), it still highlights the growing gap between capture and approval, making it hard to get a clear picture of your finances.
Without timely approvals, finance teams lack a real-time view of spending, making it harder to forecast accurately or manage budgets proactively. Put simply, without timely approvals, your teams can’t accurately forecast or manage budgets proactively, and cash flow becomes unpredictable.
Reduced visibility and audit risk
Detail is crucial when it comes to expense management, especially when it comes to submitting claims. Why? Because missing details create gaps in your records, which makes the audit process even harder. If you’re left with unclear descriptions and mismatched data, it can create gaps that weaken audit trails and increase compliance risks for your business. When spend isn’t captured cleanly or consistently, it becomes harder for your teams to verify transactions, justify spend categories, or respond confidently during an audit or HMRC review.
Slower reimbursements
When claims are rejected repeatedly or stuck waiting for clarification, employees feel the impact directly. Slower reimbursement cycles don’t just affect your cash flow; they also damage trust in the process, create friction between you and your people. Which no one wants.
Over time, this can discourage timely submissions altogether, with your teams losing confidence in the system, especially in situations where reimbursements drag on for weeks. It all feeds back into the issues that create the rejections in the first place.
How to reduce rejected expense claims
You might think rejected expense claims are small, isolated issues, but as we’ve highlighted, they create delays, extra admin, and real financial blind spots. The good news? Most of these problems are fixable long before a claim reaches your finance team. With clearer guidance, better checks at the point of submission, and a simple way for people to capture receipts in the moment, you can cut down on rejections and keep everything moving smoothly.
Capture Expense removes the most common reasons claims are rejected—missing data, mismatched receipts, vague descriptions, late submissions—by guiding employees through a structured, automated process.
We give your people an easy way to:
- Submit complete, accurate claims instantly, wherever they are with our mobile app that uses AI to extract the data from receipts.
- Customise and set spend limits per employee with our business expense cards, with each expense checked against your policies from the point of submission.
- Give your finance team the real-time visibility they need to manage spend confidently with our expense reporting, broken down by user, team, mileage, and more.
- Reduce admin with automated expense reimbursements, saving on spend and time for your finance teams.
From automated receipt scanning to policy enforcement, book a demo to see how we can help you take control of your expenses.
Find out more about Capture Expense
We’re so much more than just an app to track your business expenses. From saving days reconciling your credit cards to getting customised insights in an inside with your finance copilot, here’s everything you need to know about Capture Expense.
