How often UAE company spend breaks its own rules

Every finance team has rules about paperwork: which purchases need a receipt, which need a note explaining what they were for, and which need a category before they can be booked.

We wanted to know how often those rules are actually met. Not whether anyone is doing anything wrong, just whether the paperwork turns up.

We looked at more than 2,000 UAE companies and over 3 million card transactions between September 2025 and August 2026, and checked each one against the company's own documentation rules. At the typical company, about 30% of transactions break them.

Nearly a third of spend breaks the company's own rules

Every company sets its own documentation rules: which transactions need a receipt, a memo explaining the purchase, or a category. When a transaction doesn't meet them, it gets flagged as out of policy.

At the typical company in our data, about 30% of transactions are out of policy. These aren't rules imposed from outside. They're the ones each finance team chose for itself.

The flag itself is doing its job. It shows exactly where the gaps are. What's interesting is how many there are, and what happens to them next.

A missing receipt is the main reason

A missing receipt is behind more than half of all out-of-policy transactions. Missing memos and missing categories come up too, but well behind.

Most flagged transactions are short of just one thing. It's rarely a messy submission with everything wrong. It's usually a clean transaction with the receipt that never got attached.

That's worth keeping in mind when reading the 30%. Out of policy doesn't mean anything was wrong with the purchase. It means the paperwork didn't follow it.

For a quarter of companies, out of policy is the norm

The 30% figure hides two very different groups. At a quarter of companies, about 1 in 6 transactions or fewer are flagged. At another quarter, more than 3 in 4 are.

For that second group, being out of policy is the normal state. When most transactions break a rule, the flag stops telling anyone much, because everything has one.

Often that's a sign the rule and the way the team actually works have drifted apart. A receipt requirement on every transaction sounds sensible when it's written. It's harder to live with on the hundredth taxi of the month.

The size of the purchase makes no difference

An AED 5,000 purchase is about as likely to be out of policy as an AED 50 one. At the typical company, roughly 30% of transactions are flagged whether they're under AED 100 or over AED 2,000.

You'd expect the opposite. Most finance teams care far more about the paperwork on a large invoice than on a coffee, and most would say so. But the data shows big purchases breaking the rules at about the same rate as small ones.

That's the gap worth closing first. A missing receipt on a small purchase is an admin problem. On a large one, it's the kind of thing that comes up in an audit.

Flagged spend rarely gets a second look

You might expect out-of-policy spend to get more scrutiny. In our data it gets less. About 2 in 3 out-of-policy transactions never went through an approval step at all, compared with about 1 in 4 transactions that were in policy.

And when spend does go to an approver, it almost always comes back approved. Rejections run at around 1 in 1,000, in policy or out.

So at many companies, two controls exist side by side without touching. The documentation rule flags the problem, and the approval step looks at a different set of transactions. The spend that most needs a second look is the spend least likely to get one.

What to do with this

A rule that most transactions break isn't working as a control. The fix is either to change the rule or to enforce it, and the data points at where to start.

1. Match the rule to the risk. If every transaction needs a receipt, the flag gets ignored. Decide which spend really needs full paperwork, and be strict about that part.
2. Start with the large transactions. They're flagged as often as small ones, and they're the ones an auditor will ask about. A rule that only covers purchases above a set amount, enforced properly, beats a universal rule nobody follows.
3. Send flagged spend to review. If a transaction is out of policy, that's the moment for a second pair of eyes. Linking the documentation rule to the approval step closes the gap between them.
4. Capture receipts at the counter. In our State of expense automation report, receipts photographed at the point of purchase arrived the same day. Many missing receipts are simply ones nobody got around to sending in.
5. Write rules people can follow. A short list of clear requirements, applied where they matter, gets followed far more often than a long policy that tries to cover everything.

Research Methodology

This analysis uses anonymized transaction data from companies using Alaan. It describes those companies, not every business in the UAE.

• Sample: More than 2,000 companies with at least 50 successful card purchases between September 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026, covering over 3 million transactions.
• Out of policy: A transaction that didn't meet the documentation rules its own company set, such as a required receipt, memo or category.
• Approval: Based on the most recent approval action recorded on each transaction.
• Typical company: Figures are medians across companies, so a few very large customers don't skew the result.
• What we don't claim: These are observed patterns, and all figures are rounded.