By Sharon Nouh (pictured), Founder & CEO, ProSpend
Does your finance team still waste hours matching invoices, chasing approvals, and managing endless spreadsheets?
Many mid-market finance teams are stuck with outdated expense management systems. While businesses adopt digital tools elsewhere, expense processes often lag, tied to legacy methods that drain time and expose organisations to avoidable risks.
For mid-market CFOs, these inefficiencies are both operational headaches and strategic disadvantages in an increasingly competitive landscape. We speak to a number of finance leaders in our new report, Modern Spend and Expense Management: A CFO’s Guide to Financial Transformation.
Andrew Mooney, a fractional CFO with experience leading fiances at Sheldon, Asia Pacific Mining Limited and Compass Resources, has watched this struggle persist across the midmarket.
“While electronic processing has mostly replaced paper documents, the process itself has remained essentially unchanged,” Mooney said.
Traditional invoice and expense management is mostly manual, relying on paper receipts, spreadsheets, and approvals. The workflow of submitting, verifying, recording, approving, and reimbursing expenses depends on physical documents and oversight, making it slow and error-prone.
The hidden cost of these outdated processes isn’t just time—it’s errors, delays, and the potential risk to business decisions. In some cases, manual processing is said to be taking up to 20 hours per month per employee.
Missed Opportunities
Legacy systems create inefficiencies, data integrity risks, and visibility gaps that simply don’t meet modern digital business needs.
Tax consultant and business advisor Umair Awan emphasises the strategic impact of poor financial transparency and lack of visibility.
“These outdated systems hinder real-time spend analysis and limit access to up-to-date financial information, making strategic decision-making more difficult,” Awan said.
“The inability to integrate seamlessly with modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) or spend management solutions significantly restricts scalability and regulatory compliance.”
Jon Morgan, CEO of US-based business consulting firm Venture Smarter, has observed their impact, even in a market where adoption of unified spend solutions may be more advanced.
“One client I worked with in retail was spending 15-plus hours a week just on invoice approvals,” Morgan said.
“That’s a huge waste of time, not to mention the risk of errors. When systems aren’t automated, approvals get delayed, and data gets messy, making it difficult to track spending accurately.”
Sujeet Jena, an experienced CFO with prior financial leadership roles at the National Institute for Dramatic Art and the University of New South Wales, confirms these challenges extend across sectors.
“While my experience is rooted in education and for-purpose, the challenges—and solutions—are highly relevant across the wider commercial sector. Organisations of all sizes and industries are facing the same pain points: fragmented systems, manual workflows, and a lack of real-time visibility,” Jena said.
Opportunity Through Change
Today’s CFOs operate far beyond traditional finance boundaries. Their strategic influence continues to expand, particularly in technology decisions.
With 60% of CFOs now directly involved in technology strategy, they are taking a more active role in driving change. This shift reflects mounting pressure to improve operations, reduce inefficiencies and deliver growth.
For Riley Redford, CFO of software development and marketing company Xrii, the weight of outdated spend management processes will be particularly cumbersome for professionals managing the finances of multiple companies.
At Xrii, Redford says the company uses an integrated tech stack, using intelligent automation tools powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), that helps them streamline expense management.
“These tools streamline reporting, reduce admin hours, and allow us to focus more on analysis and strategic positioning,” Redford said.
“Without a solid, purpose-driven tech stack, businesses get bogged down in daily admin, leaving little time for growth. It’s essential to evaluate new technologies to understand the potential time, cost, and opportunity benefits of change.”
The persistence of outdated expense management systems represents a significant yet often overlooked drag on mid-market business performance. As finance teams continue battling with manual processes, spreadsheets and fragmented systems, opportunities for strategic insight and competitive advantage slip away.
For forward-thinking CFOs, recognising these hidden costs is the first critical step toward transforming expense management from an administrative burden into a strategic asset.
This article is an adapted excerpt from a comprehensive report exploring spend management challenges and change. For more insights on transforming your financial operations, download the complete Modern Spend and Expense Management: A CFO’s Guide to Financial Transformation eBook.
