Writing a missing-receipt policy people actually follow

Some receipts are never coming. The taxi printed nothing, the café’s terminal was out of paper, the PDF went to an inbox that no longer exists. This happens on every card programme at every company, and a policy that has no answer for it produces one of two outcomes: charges that sit unresolved for months, or an unwritten rule that quietly lets everything through.

A good missing-receipt policy is not stricter. It is more specific — it says exactly what happens, who decides, and when the matter is closed.

Name the exception instead of pretending it away

If the only compliant state is “receipt attached”, then every lost receipt becomes an open item with nowhere to go. Give the exception a name and a status of its own — a declaration, an affidavit, a missing-receipt form, whatever fits your house language.

The important property is that it is a resolved state, not a permanent gap. The charge is documented, differently. The month can close. The auditor can see both that the receipt was absent and how that absence was handled, which is a far better story than silence.

What the declaration has to capture

Keep it to what a reviewer would need in two years, when nobody remembers the transaction:

The merchant, amount, and date. What was purchased and the business purpose. Why the receipt is unavailable — one honest sentence. Who is declaring it. And who approved it.

The last two matter most. A declaration signed only by the person who spent the money is a note to self. Countersigned by a manager or finance, it is a control.

Set a threshold, and set it honestly

Not every charge deserves the same ceremony. A common structure is three bands:

Below a small-value threshold — often somewhere between €25 and €50 — a declaration alone is sufficient. Chasing a €7 coffee receipt costs more in salaried minutes than the VAT it recovers.

Above that threshold, a declaration plus explicit manager approval. This is where most business meals, taxis, and small supplies land.

Above a materiality threshold — say €250 — a declaration is not enough. Somebody contacts the supplier for a duplicate invoice. Above €100 you generally need a full invoice to reclaim BTW anyway, so the reclaim value alone usually justifies the phone call. We cover those requirements in what a receipt needs to reclaim BTW.

Whatever numbers you choose, write them down. An unwritten threshold is applied inconsistently, and inconsistency is what auditors actually object to.

Put a clock on it

Deadlines do the work that reminders cannot. A workable pattern: receipts due within seven days of the charge appearing; a declaration required by period close; anything unresolved at close is either billed back to the employee or escalated to their manager.

The billed-back option deserves a sentence of its own, because it is the part people hesitate over. Its purpose is not punishment — it is that an undocumented charge on a company card is, from the tax authority’s point of view, difficult to defend as a business expense. Recovering it from the cardholder resolves the position cleanly. Say that out loud in the policy and it reads as bookkeeping rather than blame.

Watch the pattern, not the incident

One missing receipt is life. Fifteen from the same person in a quarter is a signal — and usually not the signal people assume. Far more often it means the capture route does not fit how that person works: they are on site all day, they buy in a currency the tool handles badly, they never open the app.

Track declarations per cardholder per period and look at the outliers before writing to them. The fix is frequently a better capture path rather than a stricter rule.

Make the compliant path the easy one

Every policy above is undermined if attaching a receipt is harder than not attaching one. The single highest-leverage change most teams can make is reducing capture to a photo taken at the table.

In Rexa a charge that cannot be documented is marked as an exception with a reason, which keeps it out of the outstanding queue while leaving it visible in the audit trail. It can be billed back to the employee where that is the right answer. Reminders go to the cardholder rather than to finance, so chasing is automatic instead of interpersonal — which is, in most companies, the actual reason receipts go missing in the first place.

General information, not tax or legal advice. Documentation requirements and the treatment of undocumented expenses vary by jurisdiction — confirm your policy with your accountant.