At a growing quick-commerce company headquartered in Hyderabad, everyday spending had become a quiet disruptor.
Teams made frequent purchases for stationery, urgent warehouse fixes, and local transport, all using petty cash. The amounts were small, but the problems that often surfaced as a result weren’t.
For Reema Sharma, who oversaw field operations in the southern region, routine petty expenses often snowballed into serious operational risks. One Friday evening, she discovered a Rs. 1.2 lakh discrepancy: the largest warehouse had multiple repairs expenses which were unaccounted for.
The root cause?
A misplaced receipt and unsynced logs. The finance audit flagged it as a compliance red alert, and Reema spent the entire weekend digging through files and messages to fix the damage.
Sadly, Reema’s story isn’t unique.
Across industries, from distribution and retail to logistics and field services, businesses are waking up to the same truth: without a modern Petty Cash Management system, small spends lead to serious leaks.
Read to know more about how to select a petty cash management solution.
Informal Cash Handling Leads to Formal Headaches
In Reema’s company, every branch had its own way of handling petty cash. Some used notebooks, others filled Excel sheets, and a few teams just forwarded WhatsApp messages with photos of receipts.
This lack of standardization led to:
- Conflicting records between branch and the central finance teams
- Confusion about approvals and spending thresholds
- No centralized audit trail
A 2023 survey by TravelBank revealed that 58% of mid-sized businesses still rely on manual or semi-manual systems for expense tracking, which increases the chances of misreporting and fraud.
And when finance teams spend weeks chasing slips of paper, it hurts more than just efficiency. It damages morale and trust.
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Errors Multiply When There’s No Automation
Take the example of Junaid, a bank manager in one of the busiest branches based in Nagpur.
He was allocated Rs. 15,000 per month for on-ground needs. But one month, Rs. 1300 went missing. This wasn’t due to fraud or ill-intentions, but because two bills were folded together and only one was logged.
It was a genuine mistake, but it threw his books off-balance.
This is the problem with manual systems in general. Manual systems introduce the following risks:
- Double entries when logs aren’t synchronized
- Lost receipts due to physical handling
- Untraceable adjustments made at the last minute
Research from Ardent Partners shows that companies using automated expense systems reduce processing time by 40% and cut errors by nearly 70%.
These are tangible, useful, immediate savings in time, money, and sanity.
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Lack of Visibility Breaks Trust
Not every issue is about money, some are about perception.
In a national apparel retail chain, the Delhi store manager’s claims were often delayed due to “insufficient documentation,” while the Mumbai store was cleared within days. This discrepancy wasn’t due to bias, but poor documentation and inconsistent policy execution.
The Delhi team began to feel unfairly treated. Over time, this eroded cooperation.
When petty cash across branches is handled in silos:
- Employees lose faith in the fairness of processes
- Managers get frustrated fielding repetitive queries
- Finance teams bear the brunt of complaints and delays
Transparency is key. When teams can log in, track their own claims, and get timely status updates, it builds trust and clarity across departments.
End-of-Month Panic Is Not a Strategy
In many organizations, petty cash reporting is treated as a monthly chore – hurriedly patched together before accounts close.
At a mid-sized design firm in Bengaluru, each project team submitted spends at the end of the month. But receipts had faded, some were lost, and several were logged under vague labels like “miscellaneous.”
The result?
Finance delayed finalization by 4 days costing late reimbursements to employees for the petty cash expenses they incurred.
Real-time logging isn’t just about speed, it’s about staying audit-ready, all the time. This is supported by anecdotes and research both, suggesting companies can save a significant chunk of their valuable time by shifting to real-time expense tracking, compared to batch reporting.
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Why Petty Cash Needs More Attention in 2025
Speed, transparency, and compliance are foundational in today’s business landscape. In such a scenario, petty cash can no longer be treated as an afterthought.
What once seemed “too small to matter” is now emerging as one of the most overlooked sources of financial risk and operational friction.
These small, everyday spends like team lunches, local travel, courier fees, emergency office supplies add up quickly. And when left unmanaged, they don’t just strain cash flow. They quietly undermine audit trails, damage internal trust, and introduce regulatory vulnerabilities.
Without a clear system in place:
- Cash disappears with no digital footprint, making post-hoc accountability nearly impossible
- Employee morale suffers, as honest reimbursements get delayed or questioned
- Audits become landmines, filled with missing receipts, manual logs, and fuzzy authorizations
- CFOs lack visibility, making it harder to forecast or detect policy violations in real time
In 2025, unmanaged petty cash across branches is much more than just a financial problem. It’s a leadership blindspot that can cost the business in a compounding manner.
To stay agile and audit-ready, businesses must bring the same level of discipline and clarity to petty cash as they do to payroll, procurement, or vendor payments. That means digitization, automation, and real-time visibility. Not spreadsheets and folders.
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Why BROME is Built for the Challenge
BROME is a comprehensive spend management solution designed for the realities of modern businesses with multiple branches. From real-time expense logging and automated policy enforcement to seamless receipt capture and finance system integration, BROME gives you full visibility and control over every rupee spent across branches.
Whether it’s ₹50 for stationery or ₹50,000 for procurement, nothing slips through the cracks at any branch.
Here’s what BROME enables you to do:
- Log petty expenses digitally, branch-wide
- Access receipts anytime with secure cloud storage
- Apply rules and spending thresholds automatically
- Track approvals, rejections, and clarifications
- Sync everything with your accounting tools
And the best part? BROME scales as you grow, whether you have 30 branches or 300.
Don’t Let Petty Cash Create Big Problems
What used to be tracked in notebooks or spreadsheets is now a source of lost time, stressed teams, and financial leakage.
With Petty Cash Management powered by BROME, you bring order, speed, and trust into your organization’s everyday spending across multiple branches.
Ready to fix petty cash, once and for all?
Book your free demo of BROME today.
