Retail
Connecting employee expenses with finance at the centre
Global Retail Services Business · Global · 1,000+ employees
An AI-powered expense platform delivering 12% annual savings and giving back 1,200 hours across 33,800 annual claims.
For a global retail and logistics business with more than 1,000 employees, small inefficiencies in expense management add up quickly.
Every journey, receipt and claim creates work: recording mileage, calculating routes, categorising costs, checking supporting evidence and confirming that expenditure meets company policy.
Digital1 built a mobile-first expense platform that connects employee submissions with automated financial checks, reducing administration and identifying problematic claims before payment.
The results include £40,000 in annual savings from eliminating employee mileage rounding, alongside time returned to employees and finance.
The challenge
Thousands of claims. Repeated work for employees and finance.
The existing process relied on employees manually recording journeys and submitting claims.
Multi-stop routes required mileage calculations. Parking, tolls and travel costs needed supporting receipts. Missing information or incorrect entries created further work when claims had to be checked, corrected and resubmitted.
At 33,800 claims annually, those repeated tasks consumed substantial time across employees and finance.
They also created unnecessary expenditure. Duplicate, incorrect, unsupported and out-of-policy claims needed to be identified before payment, placing a recurring checking burden on the finance team.
Employee rounding of journey distances added another cost. Small differences in individual mileage claims accumulated across thousands of journeys, inflating annual expenditure.
The opportunity was to make expenses easier to capture, calculate mileage accurately and build validation directly into the submission process.
The business at a glance
- £54M+ annual turnover.
- 1,000+ employees.
- 24M+ pieces sourced annually.
- 30+ global retail partners.
- 30+ years of industry experience.
- Global retail and logistics operations.
What Digital1 built
A mobile expense platform with AI embedded in the workflow.
Digital1 built a platform that allows employees to record journeys, capture multi-stop routes and submit parking, tolls and travel expenses directly from their phone.
AI extracts receipt information, calculates mileage, categorises expenditure and validates claims. Exceptions are surfaced before they reach finance, reducing the manual work involved in checking every submission.
The platform connects the employee’s activity with the financial controls needed to assess it, bringing capture, calculation and validation into one workflow.
Finance at the centre
Accurate mileage calculations
The platform calculates mileage from recorded journeys, including routes with multiple stops.
This removes employee rounding from mileage calculations, reducing inflated claim values and giving finance more accurate information to validate before payment.
Employees spend less time working out distances, while finance spends less time checking and correcting them.
Checking claims before payment
Automated validation helps identify duplicate, incorrect, unsupported and out-of-policy claims before money leaves the business.
Financial checks take place earlier in the process, reducing the need for finance to uncover problems through manual review.
Receipt extraction and expense categorisation
Employees capture receipts from their phone, with AI extracting the information needed to support the claim and categorising the expenditure.
This reduces manual entry and gives finance more consistent information when reviewing expenses.
Exception handling
Claims requiring attention are surfaced for review.
Finance can focus on discrepancies and policy issues, with routine extraction, calculation and checking handled within the platform.
AI that progresses the work
From expense capture to a checked claim.
The platform brings several steps together: capturing a receipt or journey, extracting the relevant information, calculating mileage, categorising spend and checking the claim against policy.
Information captured by the employee feeds directly into the checks needed by finance, reducing repeated handling between submission and review.
Where an exception is identified, it is surfaced for human attention. People retain responsibility for decisions requiring judgement, while AI reduces the repetitive processing around them.
Easier for employees. Less rework for finance.
Employees can record expenses from their phone, bringing journeys and supporting receipts into the same process.
Capturing information closer to the activity reduces the effort involved in preparing claims later. Automated extraction and calculations also reduce the details employees need to enter manually.
For finance, more consistent submissions and earlier validation mean less time spent correcting claims and chasing supporting information.
The impact
12% annual saving on employee expense spend
The platform prevents duplicate, incorrect, unsupported and out-of-policy claims before payment, delivering a 12% annual saving on employee expense expenditure.
The financial benefit comes from applying controls within the workflow, where issues can be identified before they become paid costs.
£40,000 annual saving from eliminating mileage rounding
Calculating mileage from recorded routes removes the rounding that previously inflated employee claims.
Across thousands of journeys, those small differences amounted to £40,000 in annual expenditure, now saved through more accurate mileage calculations.
1,200 hours given back annually
Across 33,800 annual claims, automated mileage calculations, receipt extraction, validation and policy checks return 1,200 hours to the business.
That capacity benefit spans the people submitting expenses and the teams responsible for checking them.
The commercial value
Expense management combines a high volume of small transactions with repeated administrative work. Minor inaccuracies can become material costs when repeated across an entire workforce.
By connecting mobile capture with AI processing and financial validation, Digital1 reduced both expense expenditure and the effort required to manage it.
The result is a simpler process for employees, more focused review for finance and measurable savings across the business.
Results
- £40,000 Annual saving from eliminating mileage rounding — More accurate mileage calculations from recorded routes remove employee rounding.
- 1,200 Hours given back — Mileage, receipts, validation and policy checks across 33,800 annual claims.