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What you'll take away
- A policy is five decisions, not a document. Categories, limits, approvals, documentation, and exceptions. Everything else is wording.
- Build the exceptions into the policy. People will hit unusual situations either way. If there's a defined route for those, they use it instead of quietly breaking the rule.
- A tiered approval threshold does most of the work. Small spend clears with one approver, anything above your threshold needs a more senior one, and nobody has to remember who signs what.
- Explain the why, in a meeting. Emailing a PDF gets you close to zero adoption. Showing it and answering questions gets you a policy people follow.
- It's a free tool and it takes about ten minutes. Your logo, your company details, no Alaan branding on the output.
The five decisions
Categories. Be explicit about what the company pays for. Travel, meals, local transport, software, office supplies, remote setup, training, client entertainment, and anything else you want to add as a custom category. Switch off the ones that don't apply to you and they disappear from the document.
Limits. Decide whether you're capping per employee per month, per transaction, both, or neither. He'd take almost any limit over no limit at all. Then set the per-expense caps that matter: a flight ceiling with a cabin class, a per-meal amount, a mileage rate per kilometer instead of the flat fuel allowance that quietly costs you a fortune.
Approvals. Whether pre-approval is required at all, who the first approver is, and the amount above which it escalates to someone more senior.
Documentation. The amount above which a receipt is mandatory, whether a proper tax invoice is required, how many days someone has to submit a claim, and when reimbursement lands.
Exceptions. When one can be requested, and who signs it off.
What the demo actually set
Running it as Alaan, with 250 employees in the UAE: pre-approval on, finance as the first approver, escalation to the department head above 500 dirhams, receipts required on effectively everything, claims submitted within seven days, and reimbursement on the next payroll cycle.
On categories, flights capped at 2,000 in economy, meals at 40 per person with a note that anything above that is on the spender, local transport at 100, office supplies at 150, and software left uncapped because a subscription can be five dirhams or five thousand. Accommodation, client entertainment, remote setup, and training were switched off. Alcohol and fines went on the non-eligible list.
On compliance, a warning for a first violation, then a salary deduction of the amount for a repeat. Exceptions allowed with department head approval.
The sidebar scores the policy as you fill it in, so you can watch it climb from a weak 50% to a complete one. There's a tone toggle too: simpler language that suits an SME or a startup, or stricter, more formal wording if you're in a corporate setting. Then you download the PDF, with your logo at the top and an internal-use disclaimer at the bottom.
The VAT detail worth getting right
This one is specific to operating here, and it's the line in the policy that pays for itself.
A receipt is not a tax invoice. To reclaim VAT you need the supplier's TRN, plus your company's name and TRN on the document. Software subscriptions bought online are where this goes wrong most often, because people expense the confirmation email and nobody notices until the return. Turn the tax invoice requirement on and the policy says it explicitly: no TRN, no reimbursement.
Getting people to follow it
Four steps, and the first one is the one nobody does.
Draft the policy, then hand it to two people who actually spend on the company's behalf and let them mark it up. They'll find the category you forgot and the limit that doesn't survive contact with a real trip.
Then explain the reasoning behind each rule, because a limit someone understands gets respected and a limit that arrived by email doesn't. Hold a session, in person or online, and walk the team through it rather than attaching it. And put a note in the calendar to review it every quarter, since the numbers that made sense in January usually don't by June.
The one thing to do this week
Open the builder and give it ten minutes with your real numbers. Even if you already have a policy, filling in the fields tends to surface the two or three decisions your current one never actually made.
Watch the session
The full recording is above. The expense policy builder is free at alaan.com/tools, along with the rest of the tools, and the output is yours: your logo, your rules, no branding from us.
