Finance teams are finally spending less time correcting mistakes and more time focusing on strategic work, according to new data from cloud-based expense management platform Capture Expense.

Its new 2026 Expense Trends Report analysed 978,036 expense claims worth more than £49 million submitted across 631 organisations between January 2025 and June 2026, making it one of the most comprehensive snapshots of business expense behaviour in the UK.

The findings reveal a significant improvement in expense management maturity. Rejected claims fell from 25,731 to 22,866 year-on-year, while the overall rejection rate dropped from 2.91% to 2.26%, despite the platform processing claims from a larger number of organisations.

At the same time, approval times have improved considerably. Immediate approvals spiked from 2.6% of claims in 2025 to 26.8% in 2026, while claims taking longer than 30 days to approve fell from 26.6% to just 3.4%.

Organisations are getting better at getting it right first time

The report suggests organisations are becoming more effective at building compliance into the expense process, helping to reduce avoidable mistakes before claims ever reach managers or finance teams. With fewer claims requiring rework or additional information, approval times are falling and employees are receiving reimbursement faster.

Missing mileage documentation remained the most common reason for rejection, accounting for 1,571 claims, while 1,545 claims were rejected due to missing or invalid receipts. Incorrect category selection or VAT treatment was responsible for a further 1,509 rejected claims.

However, the overall decline in rejection rates indicates that employees are becoming more familiar with expense policies, while automated controls and more intuitive systems are helping identify issues earlier in the process, creating a smoother experience for both employees and finance teams.

Speaking about the report’s findings, James Rowell, Founder of 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.”

Moving from correction to prevention

According to Capture Expense, the findings reflect a broader shift away from reactive expense management towards preventative compliance.

Callum Beckwith, Technical Lead at 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.”

Despite the improvements, the report found that compliance challenges remain. Around 2.68% of claims were submitted without a receipt attached, while 7.98% contained vague or incomplete descriptions, demonstrating there is still work to do to improve claim quality.

Rowell adds: “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 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.”

You can read the full 2026 Expense Trends report here.