How to get consultants' expenses and receipts in before month end

To get consultants' expenses and receipts in before month end, ask for each card line in the week of the trip, one line at a time, instead of waiting for the month to close. Each line needs three things before a consultancy can close it: a receipt that is a proper invoice, the engagement it belongs to, and whether the client is paying for it. Asked for that week, they turn the last days of the month into a short list of exceptions. Asked for on the 30th, the same three things are a search through a consultant's coat pockets.

Why a consultancy feels this more than most

Consultants spend on client sites, and many engagement letters say expenses are recharged. So a missing receipt does not only hold up your own books. It holds up the client's invoice, or goes out a month late and gets queried. And the people who owe the receipts are the people least often in the office.

What each line needs

• A receipt that is a VAT invoice, where VAT is to be reclaimed. GOV.UK says you cannot reclaim VAT on a pro-forma, a statement, a delivery note or an invoice that is not valid. A card slip for a hotel is not the hotel's VAT invoice. For travel, GOV.UK also tells an employer to keep a record of when and why the employee travelled, and receipts where possible. A mileage claim has no receipt and needs the date, the journey and the reason instead.

• An engagement code. Without it the cost cannot be set against the right client or the right budget.

• Rechargeable or not, under that engagement's terms: at cost, capped, approved in advance, or absorbed in the fee.

Who chases expenses today, step by step

1. The engagement letter sets the terms. What is recharged, on what basis and with what evidence. The partner agrees it with the client.

2. The consultant spends on the company card or their own, and is meant to capture the receipt then.

3. Somebody finds the gaps. Today the operations manager or bookkeeper does it once, at month end, going down the card statement.

4. Somebody asks. The same person, by email, to people on trains. Associates are asked separately, because their expenses arrive on their own invoices.

5. Each receipt is matched to its line by date, supplier and amount, and read against the expenses policy.

6. A person approves the claim: the operations manager, or the partner for their own team.

7. Rechargeable costs go on the client's invoice, with the receipts behind them.

The VAT at step 7 needs care. HMRC's guidance says that a cost you incur yourself in order to do the work, and its example is an airline ticket to visit a client, is not a disbursement when you recharge it: "you must charge VAT because the flight was for you, not for the client." Of recharges it says: "You'll have to charge VAT on them whether you paid any VAT or not." So a train fare that carried no VAT when you bought it can carry VAT on your invoice. How your recharges are treated is your accountant's call, and worth settling once and writing down.

Which steps an AI worker can take on

In this job an AI worker, working to a specification you have approved and checked by a named person, can take steps 3, 4 and 5, and prepare step 7.

It can find each week's lines with no receipt, code or claim, ask the consultant who spent the money, and match what comes back: the role is specified on expense and receipt chasing. In a consultancy it can do three more things.

• It can read each cost against that engagement's terms and flag one above a cap, or one that needed the client's approval in advance.

• It can ask associates for the receipts behind the expenses on their invoices.

• Before your invoice run it can give the operations manager one schedule per engagement: costs ready to recharge with their receipts, and lines still open and whose they are.

What waits for a person, and why

Approval of every claim and every recharge, because it is the firm's money and the client's. Anything outside the policy. A receipt that is really lost: whether the claim is paid without it is a manager's decision. The VAT treatment, which is your accountant's. Reimbursement, which your team pays through your own bank or payroll: an AI worker pays nothing. And the phone call to the consultant who has ignored four messages, which may land better from a partner.

What to have ready before you start

• An expenses policy on one page: what is allowed, the limits, what counts as evidence.

• A list of live engagements and their codes, with each one's expense terms in a line.

• The cut-off calendar: the day the month closes and the day client invoices go.

• Who approves what, by name.

• Your accountant's ruling on recharges, in writing.

What you can change this week

Move the chase from monthly to weekly, and make it specific. Name the line in the message: "Tuesday 14th, the hotel in Leeds: I need the VAT invoice and the engagement code" is easier to answer from a train than "your expenses are due". Put the expense terms of every live engagement in one list. And count the card lines still unmatched on the day you close this month, so you have a number to beat.

Receipts are one of several jobs that grow with every engagement, set out in our article on scaling a management consultancy without hiring. The others, from proposals to the CRM, are on our page for management consultancies, with what an agent can take on in each.

An AI worker would ask your consultants for each receipt while the trip is still remembered and hand your operations manager a list to approve, and the VAT would stay your accountant's call. How many receipts are still missing from last month's card lines? Talk to our agent.