Project Overview
A UK scale-up with 840 employees across 18 countries needed to replace Concur (£180,000/year licence) with a b...
Technology Stack
Compliance & Standards
The Challenge
A UK scale-up with 840 employees across 18 countries needed to replace Concur (£180,000/year licence) with a bespoke multi-currency expense management platform. FCA Consumer Duty (if offering expense card product), UK GDPR for employee financial data, HMRC FRS 102 compliance for expense accounting, IR35 (contractor expense claims), VAT reclaim automation (HMRC VAT API), and IFRS 16 (lease accounting for car expenses) were the requirements. Budget: £140,000.
Our Approach
Base currency
GBP. 18 transaction currencies.
Exchange rates
European Central Bank (ECB) XML data feed (daily official rates), Open Exchange Rates API for real-time rates.
Expense submission
employee submits in local currency → platform converts to GBP at submission-date ECB rate → reimbursement in employee's local currency at current ECB rate (foreign exchange gain/loss tracked per expense).
Receipt OCR
Google Cloud Vision API — merchant, amount, date, currency extracted automatically.
HMRC Making Tax Digital VAT API
automated VAT reclaim data extraction from expense claims.
UK VAT reclaim rules
standard rate VAT (20%) on business expenses with valid VAT receipt, partial reclaim on fuel (HMRC Advisory Fuel Rate), no reclaim on employee entertaining.
VAT return data
automatically tagged expense categories → VAT return box population.
Input tax claim
Box 4 (VAT reclaimed on purchases) automated from categorised expenses.
FRS 102 Expense Accounting
FRS 102 (UK GAAP): employee expense accruals at month-end for submitted but unpaid claims, foreign currency transactions at transaction date rate (FRS 102 Section 30), and related party disclosure (director expense claims exceeding normal business rates flagged).
IFRS 16 lease identification
car expenses categorised by duration and amount — IFRS 16 right-of-use asset candidates automatically flagged for finance team review.
IR35 Contractor Expense Handling
Off-payroll working (IR35): contractor expenses have different tax treatment from employee expenses.
Platform
contractor/employee flag per user, contractor expense types restricted to genuine business expenses (no home-to-work travel — not allowable for contractors), HMRC approved mileage rates for contractor travel, and P11D reporting — benefits in kind calculation for contractors where applicable.
The Results
Platform live at 18 weeks, £128,000 — under budget.
Concur replaced: £180,000 annual licence saving.
Expense claim processing time: 3.2 days → 4.2 hours.
VAT reclaim accuracy: 94% automatic vs 78% manual (accountant review).
Receipt OCR accuracy: 91% (vs 100% manual but 40× slower).
FRS 102 month-end accrual: automated — previously 2-day finance team exercise.
IR35 contractor expense flags: 12 incorrectly categorised claims identified in first quarter (preventing potential HMRC investigation).
“£180,000 annual licence saving from replacing Concur was the commercial case. 4.2 hours versus 3.2 days for expense processing is the operational benefit. The VAT reclaim accuracy improvement from 78% to 94% pays for the platform's build cost in recovered VAT annually. The IR35 contractor expense flags in Q1 identified 12 incorrect claims — potentially significant HMRC exposure avoided." — CFO, UK Scale-Up (name withheld)”
Project Details
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