Field Notes
Where expense claims quietly overlap with procurement spend
In many Taiwanese mid-market firms, small tooling, courier fees, and event catering move through employee expense claims even when a preferred supplier already sits on the purchase-order system. Buyers rarely see those claims; finance rarely sees the PO history.
During a recent readiness review we matched claim merchant names against the supplier master. Several reimbursements mirrored invoices already paid through accounts payable within the same fortnight. None looked fraudulent at a glance — they looked like hurried workarounds when a PO was delayed.
The fix was operational rather than punitive. Procurement shortened the rush-order path, and finance added a merchant-name check before releasing claims above a modest threshold. Duplicate risk fell without adding another approval layer for every lunch receipt.
If your teams still treat expense claims and purchase orders as separate worlds, ask for a cross-check on the top twenty claim merchants each quarter. It is a small ask that often surfaces the same leakage an annual audit would eventually find.