State of expense automation in the UAE

Most of what you see written on expense automation is sourced from global vendors blogs or surveys, the numbers quoted and re quoted and in almost all cases are unrelated to the UAE.

We chose to look at our own data, over 3.5 million card transactions from 3000+ UAE Companies on Alaan, from September 2025 to August 2026, that have gone through the process of being spent and followed up to see where in the process they are sitting when the card is swiped, when the receipt is received and when the spend is approved and whether it eventually makes its way to the accounting system.

In short, It takes about a day to get the receipt in, a week to get the spend approved and for the majority of companies; the transaction never makes it into the accounting system without a manual entry.

The longer story has a few surprises in it including a revelation about month end that we had previously got wrong.

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The numbers at a glance

Every figure below is rounded, and times are medians unless we say otherwise.

Why this matters more in the UAE right now

For a long time, a UAE finance team could get away with a fairly relaxed approach to expense paperwork. That has changed quickly.

Corporate tax has applied since financial years starting on or after June 1, 2023, and it brought record-keeping requirements with it. Spend that can't be backed up with documentation is harder to defend when someone asks about it later.

E-invoicing is next. The voluntary phase opened in July 2026, and the mandate starts on January 1, 2027 for businesses with revenue of AED 50 million or more, followed by everyone else on July 1, 2027. E-invoicing covers invoices between businesses rather than card receipts, so it doesn't change how a coffee or a taxi gets recorded. What it does change is the expectation that financial documents move digitally and on time.

That's the backdrop for the numbers below. Most finance teams already know their process has slow spots. This is our attempt to show where they actually are.

Receipts are the fast part

About 2 in 3 transactions on Alaan have a receipt attached, and most of those arrive within a day or two of the purchase.

That's quicker than most finance teams would guess. The image people carry around is a shoebox of crumpled paper handed over at the end of the month, and that does still happen. It's just not the typical case anymore.

The rate has been fairly steady, too. Across the twelve months we looked at, the share of transactions with a receipt stayed in the mid-60s month after month. The one dip came in March 2026, when the regional conflict escalated and our customers made about a quarter fewer transactions than in January and February. Ramadan and Eid also fell in March, with shorter working hours across the country. The receipt rate slipped by a few points that month and was back in the mid-60s by April. We can’t tell from the data which of these pulled it down, only that it recovered quickly.

When the receipt gets captured matters more than how

Receipts captured at the point of purchase usually land the same day. Receipts uploaded later take a day or two on median, and the slowest quarter of them take closer to a week.

Just under half of receipts are captured on the spot. The phone camera is the single most common way receipts come in, at about a third of all of them, and WhatsApp accounts for roughly another one in ten. WhatsApp is also the fastest channel we saw. Most receipts sent that way arrive within hours of the purchase, which makes sense when the app is already open on the phone that just paid.

The rest come in later, mostly through the web app or as a saved photo uploaded after the fact. The web app alone handles close to a third of receipts, usually from someone catching up at a desk.

One result surprised us. Email forwarding, which sounds like the most automated option, is barely used. It accounts for about 1 in 100 receipts, and it isn't faster than snapping a photo at the counter.

The pattern holds at every company size. At the smallest companies, a receipt captured on the spot arrives the same day, while one uploaded later takes about two days on median. A receipt photographed at the counter is done. A receipt that goes into a pocket waits for someone to remember it, and that someone is usually busy.

Approval is where spend waits

The median transaction takes about a week to get approved. For the slowest quarter, it's three weeks or more.

That makes approval the longest step in the process by a distance. The receipt is usually in within a day, and the spend then sits there for the rest of the week.

It's worth being clear about what approval means here. In the data we looked at, every approval came after the purchase. The money has already left the account by the time anyone signs off, so approval works as a review of spend that has happened, rather than permission for spend that hasn't.

At the far end, about 1 in 20 approved transactions were signed off more than three months after the purchase. By then, the quarter they belong to has usually been closed. Those long waits also pull the overall picture up a little. If you include them, the median moves closer to eight days.

Here's the part we found most interesting. Fewer than 2 in 1,000 transactions that go through approval end up rejected or cancelled. We can't see what happens during that week of waiting. We can see how it almost always ends.

Most companies approve some spend and skip the rest

Only 17% of companies send every transaction through approval. Another 14% don't use approvals at all.

The other 69% are somewhere in between. They approve some spend and let the rest through, and on average they skip approval on almost half their transactions.

Across the whole sample, that adds up to a bit over half of all transactions going through approval and a bit under half going straight through. So when we say approval takes a week, that week applies to just over half the spend. The rest moves on without it.

We don't see the rules companies use to decide what needs approval, only the result. But the result says something on its own. For most finance teams on Alaan, approval is a filter they apply to the spend they want a second look at, and they've already decided that a large share of their spend doesn't need one.

That's a reasonable call. The question it raises is whether the half that does go through approval is the right half.

Bigger companies wait longer for approval

Approval takes around 4 days on median at companies with 10 employees or fewer, and around 10 days at companies with more than 500. Mid-sized companies sit in between.

The data doesn't tell us why. Anyone who has chased a sign-off through three levels of management will have a theory.

Receipts go the other way. The smallest companies attach a receipt to about half their transactions, while larger ones are closer to 2 in 3 or more. Small teams approve faster and document less, which tracks with what you'd expect when the person spending and the person approving are often sitting at the same desk.

Both results point at the same thing. Small companies tend to have speed and lose some of the paper trail along the way. Larger companies keep the paper trail and pay for it in waiting time. Neither has it fully solved.

We also checked whether companies get better at receipts the longer they use Alaan. Across all companies, those with us for more than a year attach receipts to about 68% of transactions, against about 62% in their first year. But as we saw above, company size makes a big difference to receipts, so we also compared companies of the same size with each other. There, the results go in different directions. Some size groups improve over time, while others stay flat or dip before rising. With no consistent pattern, we can’t say time on the platform is what makes the difference, so we’re leaving that one as an open question.

There's no month-end rush

We expected receipts and approvals to pile up at the end of the month. They don't.

We looked at the last 3 days of each month plus the first 5 days of the next, which is the window most finance teams would call close. About 26% of receipt uploads and 26% of approvals happen in that window. If activity were spread perfectly evenly through the month, you'd expect about 27%. The rest of the month carries its fair share.

This was the finding we were most confident about before we looked, and we were wrong. Most people who have worked in finance have a memory of the first week of the month being chaos, and plenty of vendor content is built on that memory.

That doesn't mean month-end is calm for finance teams. It means the pressure isn't coming from employees all submitting at once. Our best guess is that it comes from what happens after approval, which is the next part.

Most spend never reaches the accounting system on its own

Fewer than 1 in 4 companies on Alaan export their transactions straight into an accounting system.

For the ones that do, approved spend gets there in about two days on median. That makes it the shortest step in the whole chain, once it's automated.

What's interesting is what doesn't change. Companies that have automated the accounting step still wait on approval, and if anything they wait a little longer, at around nine days on median. Connecting the accounting system fixes the last step. It does nothing for the slowest one.

For everyone else, the trail in our data ends at approval. Whatever happens next happens outside the platform, whether that's a file export, a spreadsheet, or someone retyping it. We can't measure that part, but if you've ever done a month-end close, you probably don't need us to.

This is also where the month-end pressure most likely lives. Receipts and approvals arrive evenly through the month, but if the last step is manual, it tends to get done in one go when the books need closing.

What to do with this

If your close feels slow, the data points at four places to look, roughly in order of how much time they hold.

1. Look at approvals before anything else. A week on median is most of the cycle, and almost nothing gets rejected at the end of it. If the approval step exists to catch problems, check how often it actually catches one. If the answer is rarely, it may be worth a smaller group of approvers, a shorter chain, or a deadline for sign-off.
2. Check which spend needs approval at all. Most companies on Alaan already approve selectively. If you approve everything, ask whether a coffee and a software contract really need the same sign-off. If you approve selectively, check that the spend you skip is the spend you're comfortable not looking at.
3. Get receipts captured at the counter. Same day versus a day or two doesn't sound like much until it's multiplied across every transaction your team makes in a month. Making the phone the default, through the app or WhatsApp, does more than another reminder email.
4. Connect your accounting system. It’s the shortest step when it’s automated and an unmeasured afternoon when it isn’t. Alaan’s accounting automation sends approved spend, with its receipt and category, straight into your accounting system, which is how the companies in our data get it there in about two days. Just don’t expect it to fix approvals, because it won’t.

Frequently asked questions

How long does expense approval take for UAE companies?

On Alaan, the median transaction takes about a week from purchase to approval. The slowest quarter take three weeks or more, and about 1 in 20 take over three months. Larger companies tend to take longer than smaller ones.

How quickly do employees submit receipts?

Receipts captured at the point of purchase, with a phone camera or WhatsApp, usually arrive the same day. Receipts uploaded later take about a day or two on median.

What share of company card spend has a receipt attached?

About 2 in 3 transactions on Alaan have a receipt attached. The smallest companies are closer to half.

Do UAE companies approve every expense?

Most don't. Only 17% of companies on Alaan approve every transaction and 14% don't use approvals at all. The other 69% approve some spend and skip approval on almost half of it.

Is month-end the busiest time for expense submissions?

Not in our data. Receipt uploads and approvals are spread almost evenly through the month, with no spike around close.

Does the UAE e-invoicing mandate apply to expense receipts?

E-invoicing covers invoices between businesses, so card receipts for things like taxis or meals aren't the focus. The mandate starts on January 1, 2027 for businesses with revenue of AED 50 million or more, and on July 1, 2027 for everyone else. For how it applies to your business specifically, check with your tax advisor.

Methodology

This analysis uses anonymized transaction data from Alaan customers. It describes companies on our platform, not every business in the UAE, and companies that choose a spend management platform are probably more organized than average to begin with.

• Sample: Over 3000 companies with at least 50 successful card purchases between September 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026, covering over 3.5 million transactions. Declined, reversed and refunded transactions are excluded.
• Receipts: A transaction counts as having a receipt if one was uploaded by September 30, 2026, so late uploads for August purchases are still counted.
• Time measures: All times are medians. "Slowest quarter" means the 75th percentile. Gaps longer than 90 days are left out of the medians and reported separately.
• Approvals: We used the final approval on each transaction. Transactions with no approval record are counted as skipping approval.
• Capture method: Point of purchase means phone camera and WhatsApp. Later upload means the web app, saved photos, file uploads and drag and drop.
• Accounting: A company counts as exporting to an accounting system if its transactions were exported from Alaan during the period.
• Company size: Based on the employee count companies give us at onboarding.
• What we don't claim: These are observed patterns. We don't say Alaan caused any of them, and all figures are rounded.

We're planning to repeat this every year. If there's something you'd want us to measure next time, tell us.