How to control employee expense fraud in a hybrid work environment?

As work has gone more and more hybrid so have so many aspects connected to it. Expense management, in particular, has had to grow to accommodate new, more diverse spending categories in business.

This includes spending done on factors like home-work environment setups, travel expenses for employees working hybrid, work-from-anywhere setups and so much more.

This changeover in spending categories of business has brought with it its own set of challenges for expense management.



As workforces have become increasingly hybrid the costs associated with their upkeep and maintenance have also diversified, leading to more and more expenses that are considered to be miscellaneous.

When working from home employees often have to incur expenses such as home-work set up repairs, food, and beverages purchased when working from home, and internet bills incurred while working.

These miscellaneous expenses have surged as the workplace has become more hybrid and they present a unique challenge to finance and accounting teams.



As more employees are working from home, or in a hybrid setup, it has become increasingly difficult to control their spending behavior.

It is understandable that maintaining control over employee spending behavior when they are working from an outside office is harder than when they used to work from the office.

This has resulted in an increase in spend policy violations. Policy violations are difficult to manage remotely and they present a significant challenge to expense management.

These include expenses that were legitimate but were overstated when employees submit receipts for claims.

As out-of-pocket expenses have increased in the hybrid environment so has the ease with which employees are able to inflate legitimate expenses and pocket the difference.

It is easier than you can imagine to digitally alter final prices on photocopies of invoices or receipts. Employees may also add small increments to miscellaneous expenses such as purchasing supplies, mileage totals, and fuel reimbursements.

Falsified or fictitious expense claims are yet another way in which business expense fraud happens. These include expenses that get reimbursed but were never really incurred in the first place.

Employees often do this by submitting falsified or fake receipts. Such expense claims also include fictitious home supplies purchases, luncheons or gifts for clients, fees paid for registering for virtual events or workshops that never really took place, and so on.



Duplicate or double reimbursements are expenses that are reported more than one time. This could include instances where an employee used their corporate card to buy something yet also submitted a receipt to claim reimbursement for that item.

Other instances include old receipts submitted for double reimbursement, the same bill submitted by two people for reimbursement, and other cases.

If you have expense policies that have been around for a long time it is time for you to revise them, especially if these policies have been in place since the pre-hybrid work era.

As the spend categories and behavior have changed with the hybrid work environment so have the requirements for curbing them.

You must revise old, obsolete expense policies to combat the new forms of expense reimbursement fraud that take place.



Employee expense fraud is at its worst when left unmonitored. To prevent misuse of funds you must ensure your finances are always monitored and approval requests are thoroughly vetted.

The best way to do this is by using expense management software, like Volopay. Use Volopay to keep track of every single penny spent in your company, in real-time.



You can also use automated expense systems like Volopay to boost the level of compliance in your company.

By implementing such a system you can greatly reduce the prevalence of business expense fraud. These systems are capable of keeping track of each and every transaction made in real-time.

Furthermore, you can even set limits for purchases made with company cards and set up highly customized approval workflows to ensure unauthorized expenses never go unchecked.



It’s easy for expense reimbursement fraud to go unchecked when you don’t track reimbursement claims. Duplicate or fictitious claims often bypass systems because of this very reason.

You can use systems like Volopay to ensure this never happens. Every single transaction is tracked on Volopay and reimbursements never get approved until they qualify every policy measure you’ve put in place.



An integrated spending solution is your best friend when it comes to ensuring complete visibility and control over your business expenses.

Getting the best expense management software gives you a comprehensive dashboard from where you can manage, control, restrict and curb all finance and accounting operations.

For example, on Volopay you can directly integrate your accounts payable, travel, payroll, reimbursement, and accounting operations.