Why finance teams are shifting away from reimbursements

The short version

If your payroll cycle stalls every 2 weeks because of reimbursement spreadsheets, you already know the model only lets you react after the money is spent. By the time you see a line item, the employee has paid out of pocket, waited 2 weeks, and is irritated when anyone questions the purchase. You burn hours on manual review while the field crew feels mistrusted, and both sides lose.

Chris Moberger, controller and acting CFO at Construction One, joined Ramp's Megan Gibbons, Head of Solutions Consulting, to break down how to replace reimbursements without losing oversight. Construction One went from employees submitting reimbursements through Google Docs to a card-first program covering field superintendents, office staff, and remote workers, with documented results.

5 controls made the switch work: role-based card limits, transaction-amount alerts, virtual cards for known spend, automatic receipt capture, and AI line-item review. Each one catches problems at the point of purchase instead of 2 weeks later when you're reviewing receipts.

Most useful for: Controllers, accounting leads, and finance managers at growing companies (especially ones with field employees, per diems, or distributed crews) who still rely on reimbursements and spend too much time on them every payroll cycle.

Why are reimbursements still eating the payroll cycle?

Reimbursements cost more than most growing companies realize. They feel like the safer path: you see the spend, ask questions, and pay it back. But in practice, Construction One's payroll administrator was opening a separate Google Doc per employee every 2 weeks.

With roughly 50 employees on payroll at the time (the company has since grown), that was 50 spreadsheets to hunt receipts in and rebuild into one consolidated input for ADP. The team was routinely up against the deadline, in Chris's words, "almost fearing missing payroll."

The hidden cost is cultural. Reimbursements quietly train employees to feel mistrusted. Chris pointed out the morale lift his field crew got the moment they were issued company cards alongside the office staff. They felt trusted and on the same playing field as everyone else at the company.

Megan framed it simply: you want to prevent policy violations before they happen, not ask questions about them afterward. Built-in card controls do that work without anyone confronting anyone. Post-spend review then shrinks to just the exceptions, not every receipt in the spreadsheet.

If the bottleneck sounds familiar, the Breaking AP Bottlenecks with Bill Pay Automation: Navion's Payments Story webinar covers how another finance team replaced a similarly manual process with automated controls.

How Construction One took control of reimbursements with Ramp

1. They cut reimbursement admin time roughly 75%

Before the switch, Construction One's payroll administrator was opening a separate Google Doc per employee every 2 weeks. At the time the company had roughly 50 employees on payroll (today it's 85). That meant 50 spreadsheets to chase down, gather receipts from, and rebuild into one consolidated input for ADP. Because ADP requires payroll inputs a few days before processing, the team was routinely up against the deadline.

After moving to a Ramp card program, every receipt lives in one searchable database, and automated reminders chase the stragglers. Chris estimates the admin lift dropped by roughly 75%. The remaining manual work is 5 or so employees a month who still need a nudge, not half the workforce.

There's another upside: searchability. Construction One's team regularly catches purchases that should've been billed back to the project owner, like a city permit or a one-off material, and turns them into change orders. The receipt is already in the system with the date, vendor, and dollar amount.

Chris credits this with adding to revenue and profit. Reimbursable purchases that used to get missed now get flagged in monthly job reviews. If your team is doing something similar, the time savings alone may justify the switch.

"Our payroll administrator had... maybe it was fifty at the time a few years ago. 50 employees, spreadsheets to jump into and try to get back up information. Try to gather receipts. It was a really time consuming process. And so that could delay payroll. [...] Sometimes we get up to the deadline and we almost fear missing our payroll because we're trying to get all the reimbursements in."

2. Smart cards lead to higher compliance, not lower

If you're worried that issuing cards will increase misuse, the data suggests the opposite. Megan shared data from a Ramp survey of more than 500 finance leaders across small business and mid-market: 77% report that employees with cards are more compliant than employees without. The key detail: this applies to card programs with built-in policy controls, not legacy open-ended cards.

Chris's own number from the field is that about 98% of his employees use cards appropriately, with 2 or 3 misuse incidents across 2 years and 85 employees. Chris says the reason is simple: the cards physically decline at categories employees shouldn't use. Most attempted violations don't clear in the first place.

The cultural framing matters too. Chris is direct with his team that a company card is a privilege, and inappropriate use is grounds to lose it. He's rarely had to enforce that line because the controls make most violations impossible.

The 2 or 3 cases of misuse that came up over 2 years? Chris caught them quickly through post-spend review, addressed them with a payroll deduction, and tightened that employee's card to a $500 monthly limit usable only at hardware stores.

"98% percent of our employees are using the cards in an appropriate manner. And a lot of that is because they're gonna get denied if they go to categories that are already blocked. And so they know that. We block down restaurants and bars. Hotels mostly for our traveling guys because they're getting a per diem so they shouldn't be spending there. They can't even use the card there, so they're not gonna try."

3. Field employees need category blocks, not approvals

Chris's superintendents typically spend on hardware stores, dumpsters, cleaning supplies, and city permits. Their cards are capped around $2,500 a month and blocked from restaurants, bars, and hotels by default, because those employees are already on a per diem. If a trip calls for putting a hotel or travel charge on the company card, the employee gets permission and Chris opens up the category for that case.

Travel spending needs transaction-amount alerts on top of category blocks. Chris sets thresholds so that a round-trip flight over roughly $1,000, or anything in a higher class of service, alerts the manager before the purchase goes through. That gives the manager a chance to have the conversation before the spend clears.

Chris's rule of thumb is to trust people to use the card and pre-decline the categories they shouldn't use. Here's how he structures the program:

1. Define the role. Office, remote, superintendent, carpenter
2. Set the monthly limit by what that role actually spends
3. Block the categories that role shouldn't use
4. Add transaction-amount alerts on top of the blocks
5. Unlock case by case when the work calls for it

"Superintendents should never be spending, in most circumstances, more than like twenty five hundred dollars a month on their card. So we'll set those limits. We don't have to approve before the purchases, because we're reviewing it after the purchase is made. You have to trust your employees are gonna use those cards appropriately."

4. Virtual cards stop vendor overcharges before they happen

Software vendors quietly auto-upgrade plans. Materials orders sit on open cards for weeks. Hard-to-cancel subscriptions keep charging long after you wanted out. Each of those becomes an overcharge you only catch at month-end, if you catch it at all.

Chris's approach is to issue virtual cards for any spend with a known dollar amount. Zoom and Procore each get a virtual card capped at the contracted amount. The $7-a-month PDF tool gets a virtual card capped at $7, so when the vendor tries to push the user to a more expensive premium tier, the upgrade auto-declines.

For large materials orders where the vendor accepts cards without a fee, Chris issues a virtual card for the exact deposit. $50,000 or $75,000 isn't unusual. He pays it, captures the rewards, and the card has nothing left on it after.

As Megan put it, when you want out of a vendor relationship, you close the card and the vendor can't keep charging. That one step replaces the cancellation runaround most finance teams know too well. The same logic applies to any contracted spend.

"We might have some materials that's a high dollar volume, $50,000, $75,000. And sometimes these vendors will take credit card without a fee. But we only wanna pay a very specific amount. We don't wanna give them a regular credit card where they can charge whatever they want. So we say, hey, we're gonna put 50% down for this payment. We'll issue a virtual credit card, pay that 50% down. And then we can reap those credit card rewards and we have time to pay it off."

5. AI line-item review catches what category blocks can't

Category controls can block a card at a bar, but they can't stop someone from ordering 2 glasses of wine on a valid restaurant tab. A card approved at gas stations can't decline beer rung up at the same register. Until recently, this meant manual receipt review for any category where line items mattered.

Chris pointed to Ramp's newer AI review features as the layer that catches what category blocks can't. Megan walked through how expense intelligence reads itemized receipt data and flags specific violations. Examples include alcohol on a meal receipt, weekend rideshare charges, high tip percentages, and receipts that don't match the underlying transaction. Flagged items land in a dedicated admin dashboard, and you can request repayment from the employee directly in Ramp.

Ramp can also auto-lock a card when an employee doesn't submit required documentation within a set window. That takes the receipt-chasing burden off your desk. Chris's experience is that the cultural piece is what makes the program stick. Most employees only have to be told once that something is out of policy, and the behavior doesn't repeat.

If you want to go further with AI-driven financial visibility, the Build 3 AI-Powered Dashboards in 60 Minutes session with Nicolas Boucher shows how to turn this kind of spend data into actionable finance dashboards in a single working session.

"A lot of times it gets addressed once with that employee. Hey, you realize this is out of policy, you don't buy more than two drinks on the tab. Something like that. A lot of times you address it once and then they're good for the rest of their career, or hopefully most of it."

How do you apply these tips for better control over your reimbursements?

Here are 3 steps you can take this quarter, based on Construction One's success:

1. List your roles and what each one actually buys. Open a spreadsheet. One row per role (superintendent, office manager, sales rep, traveling exec). One column for typical monthly spend, one for the categories that role legitimately needs, one for the categories it should never use. This is the foundation for any card program.
2. Identify your recurring software vendors and write down each contracted amount. Those become your first virtual cards. Set the limit to the contracted amount and stop worrying about quiet upgrades or hard-to-cancel subscriptions.
3. Pick one transaction-amount alert and turn it on. Round-trip airfare is a good starting point if you have any travel. The point is to get one manager-in-the-loop alert running before you try to design the perfect policy.

Construction One didn't start with a finished policy. It started with role-based limits, category blocks, and post-spend review, and grew from there.

Want to see how another company did something similar? The Taking Control of High-Volume AP: How Byler did it webinar walks through a comparable rollout.

Final thoughts

"We tell our employees, you're gonna get issued a company credit card. It is a privilege to have, but if you can't use it properly, we do have the ability to take that away from you. And so when we talk to most of them about that, they realize that, and so they use it in an appropriate manner."

Chris's program works because it does two things at once: it catches policy violations at the point of purchase, and it shows employees they're trusted to spend responsibly. The reimbursement model couldn't do either. Build the rails and trust the team.

See how Ramp fits in

Construction One runs on one platform, with role-based limits, category blocks, virtual cards for software and large vendor payments, automatic receipt capture, and AI line-item review. If reimbursements are slowing down your payroll cycle, the fastest next step is a walkthrough of your actual spend categories.

Common questions controllers are asking

How do you set a card limit for a role you've never tracked before?

Look at 3 months of reimbursement totals for that role and set the limit slightly above a typical month, not the highest month. In Chris's experience, the goal isn't to ration spend but to cap obvious outliers. You can always raise the limit for a specific employee for a specific reason. What you can't do is claw back a $4,000 charge that already cleared because nobody set a ceiling.

What happens the first time an employee's card declines at a blocked category?

The employee texts their manager or the controller and asks why. According to Chris, that's the conversation you want, because it happens before the spend, not after. Most of the time the answer is that the spend belongs on a per diem or a different budget line. Occasionally the answer is that the category genuinely needs to be unlocked for that trip, and you unlock it for that employee for that window.

Does the IRS accept receipts captured by Ramp during an audit?

Yes. Your audit trail is built automatically. Ramp captures the merchant, date, amount, and the photographed receipt image and stores them with the transaction record, which is the documentation an auditor expects. For common merchants, Ramp can also auto-generate a receipt from merchant data, so even when the employee never submits one, the underlying record holds up.

How do you handle the employee who keeps forgetting to submit receipts?

Ramp can auto-lock the card until the missing documentation is submitted (Jenny called this a customer favorite during the session). One enforcement event usually fixes the pattern for that employee. If it doesn't, you tighten that specific card to a smaller limit or a narrower category list rather than rewriting the policy for the whole company, which is the approach Chris uses for the rare misuse cases on his team.