You know the drill. An employee can't get their mileage claim through. An invoice is stuck in approval. A receipt is missing. And the month-end closes in three days.It looks like an operational issue. In practice, it's a risk.
TL;DRAn SLA is not a technical footnote. It is a business agreement covering continuity, control and predictable costs. When you digitise expenses, invoices and time, three things matter in particular: clearly defined response and resolution times, a clear incident and escalation model, and compliance support that covers documentation, audit trails and regulatory changes.
An SLA is not a technical footnote. It is a business agreement covering continuity, control and predictable costs. When you digitise expenses, invoices and time, it is the SLA, response times and handling of service disruptions that determine whether automation becomes a relief – or creates a new bottleneck.
Here are three things you should insist on:
When a supplier responds quickly but the problem remains, it is still the finance team that deals with the consequences. That is why your SLA should define both:
Response time (first response) and resolution time (when the issue is actually fixed) – ideally broken down by severity.
A simple CFO test is to ask: What happens if the approval workflow stops on a Friday? If the corporate card integration fails? If the automated matching of transactions and receipts goes wrong – and month-end starts slipping?
This is where faster month-end closing either becomes a real outcome – or remains an ambition.
The biggest frustration is often not the issue itself. It is the silence that follows. The lack of ownership. And finance only discovering the problem when employees start sending screenshots around in long email threads.
A clear escalation model allows finance to manage the process without becoming the support desk: Who owns the case? When is it escalated? How often will you receive an update – and in what format?
Martin Eriksen, Chief Marketing Officer at Acubiz, puts the point like this: “It is easier to register and allocate a cost when it occurs than to reconstruct it afterwards.” The same applies to service disruptions. The earlier they are dealt with, the smaller the cost.
Research from the Proof of Concept 2023 Survey points to some familiar challenges: 77% of customers cite excessive administrative time, 66% physical receipts and 53% receipts going missing. After implementation, 96% say they no longer experience the same problems.
But compliance is about more than simply “scanning a receipt”. It is about digital bookkeeping, document retention and an audit trail that stands up to scrutiny – so audits run smoothly and new requirements don't turn into urgent tasks.
At BDO, 1,400 employees said goodbye to crumpled receipts. Nina Hjorthmose explains that employees can “easily take a picture of their receipt and complete their expense claim straight away” – and that support was close at hand when they got started.
That is the point: automation only works when operations and support do too.
You are not just buying a system.
You are buying a service agreement that affects internal controls, cash flow and peace of mind.
So set up your SLA as you would any other critical service:
Measurable. Escalatable. Audit-ready.
And remember the bigger picture: expense management, invoice workflows and time tracking effectively become one connected control trail. When it all works together, you get data ready for bookkeeping, fewer manual steps and an administration function that can be reduced significantly – in some cases by as much as 80%.
This isn't technology.
It's expense management.
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