How Do You Handle Employee Reimbursements Efficiently?

Employee reimbursements may not be the flashiest part of running a business, but they are pretty telling. When handled well, they reinforce trust, improve financial visibility, and keep operations humming. When handled poorly, expect confusion, wasted time, delayed payments, and frustrated employees.

Whether you’re running a lean startup or managing a finance team in a larger business, your approach to reimbursements sets the tone for how your company values time, clarity and accountability.

And compliance around employee reimbursements isn’t just about keeping your books in order—employer responsibilities for timely reimbursements are covered under Canada’s Labour Code. 

We spoke with Mandeep Saini, Co-Founder and Head of Finance Services at BrightIron, a fractional finance, HR, and Go-to-market services provider for Canadian startups and scale-ups and Float customer, to get his take on where businesses go wrong and how they can fix it. 

Mandeep’s top-level advice? Tailor your systems and tools to your company’s stage and complexity. Let’s look at what he suggests for both small business owners and growing companies with in-house finance teams.

Efficient employee reimbursement strategies for small businesses

Small teams move fast. They’re often short on headcount and time, and processes like employee reimbursements tend to happen on the fly. That ad hoc approach might work at first, but it doesn’t last.

“Manual processes are fine, but they don’t scale—and then they break quickly,” says Mandeep.

Here are Mandeep’s top tips on how small business owners can avoid employee expense reimbursement clutter and chaos.

1. Create a simple employee reimbursement policy

Even if your team is only five people strong, put a one-pager outlining what can be reimbursed, when to get pre-approval and how to submit expenses. Without this, expectations can vary wildly. One employee might think lunch with a client means a $100 sushi bill, while another sticks to a sandwich. Policies bring clarity and consistency that prevent awkward conversations later.

2. Automate, don’t email

Reimbursements via email might seem efficient, but are a black hole in reality. Once someone hits send on their employee reimbursement form and backup docs, the process becomes opaque. This leaves them to wonder when (or if) they’ll be reimbursed. This can also create work for the person managing reimbursements, if they’re spending time sharing status updates with people submitting requests with no transparency into the process. Luckily, today’s tools can streamline this completely, from receipt capture to approval and payment.

3. Make it easy for employees

Missing or incomplete receipts can create headaches during reconciliation and tax time. But most small businesses don’t have the bandwidth to chase them down. A simple fix? Make it easy for employees to upload expenses in real time through a software platform or integrated tool rather than waiting to email or submit physical receipts.

4. Make it mobile-friendly

Reducing obstacles for expense submission is half the battle, so choose a tool that lets employees snap and upload photos from their phones. It simplifies compliance and ensures you’re capturing the right data for accurate reporting. Itemized receipts and tax information can go a long way toward keeping you compliant.

5. Don’t DIY forever

Founders often try to save money by handling reimbursements themselves. However, time spent approving expenses or chasing receipts could be better invested in growth. Even if you’re not ready to hire in-house finance support, outsourcing or automation can buy back critical hours.

Efficient strategies for medium or larger businesses (with in-house finance teams)

Larger organizations face different challenges. With more employees and a wider range of expenses, the complexity increases, as do the risks of non-compliance, delays and inconsistency.

“The biggest concern at scale is efficiency and transparency,” says Mandeep. “Employees need to know what’s allowed, what’s not and where things stand at any point in the process.” 

And so do you. Here’s how Mandeep suggests you keep employee expense reimbursements running smoothly at scale without losing your grip on your finances — or your sanity.

1. Use robust systems that help enforce your policies

Finance teams in larger organizations need software that supports more complex rules. Whether limiting spend by role, enforcing preferred vendors or flagging claims outside your employee reimbursement policy, a modern platform can help you stay compliant without slowing things down.

2. Set approvals before the spend happens

It’s too late to flag issues after the fact. A pre-approval process helps set expectations and avoid awkward back-and-forth exchanges that cause anxiety on both sides. With upfront guardrails in place, employees can confidently make purchases they know will be reimbursed.

3. Increase transparency

Employees shouldn’t be left guessing. Anyone who has ever submitted an employee reimbursement form only to hear crickets for weeks knows how frustrating it can be. A good expense management system allows real-time tracking so they know when something is pending, approved or paid. That visibility also helps managers spot bottlenecks or delays in the process.

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4. Align finance with employee experience

Delays in reimbursement can quietly erode employee trust, especially for team members who may not have the financial flexibility to float business costs. A consistent, predictable system supports both employee satisfaction and operational integrity.

5. Match tools to team structure

Choose solutions that integrate smoothly with your workflows and approval hierarchy. Save the heavy lifting for the gym. If your finance team is juggling multiple tools, consolidating can reduce friction and improve data accuracy.

Float: Streamlined workflows for employee reimbursements

Whether you’re a startup owner drowning in emailed receipts or a finance lead wrangling approvals across departments, the right system for employee expense reimbursements can change the game.

Float offers a complete solution built for small and scaling businesses. With it, your employees can spend how and when they need to, without headaches. In Mandeep’s experience, this kind of streamlining allows owners and finance teams to focus on the work that matters. 

“We love Float. It’s cost efficient, meets the needs of SMBs and the company is constantly innovating,” says Mandeep of BrightIron’s experience as a Float customer. “It’s built from the perspective of a finance person. We were using three or four different tools, and now we can replace them with Float.”

From virtual corporate cards and spend limits to automated receipt tracking and pre-approvals, Float helps companies replace informal, scattered processes with smart, scalable ones. Bonus: it saves time for everyone involved, from employees to finance to founders.

Learn more about Float

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Ready to make reimbursements less painful? Explore how Float can boost transparency and simplify your team spending.

BrightIron is a fractional resource provider to leading startups and SMBs across North America. They offer both functional and leadership talent as-a-service, scaling with your business and delivering the right expertise at the right time.  Their broad range of services include bookkeeping, accounting, fractional CFO, HR support as well as Go-To-Market expertise.

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