It was close to the financial year ending, and Sunil Mehra, the CFO of a growing retail chain with 68 branches across India, was trying to make sense of an Excel sheet. Rs. 4 lakhs showed under the vague umbrella of “Miscellaneous Branch Expenses.” There were no receipts or explanations, only a growing sense of helplessness.
Petty cash isn’t so petty. When you’re managing hundreds of employees and dozens of branches, the so-called “petty” quickly becomes pretty massive. And yet, it’s often the most neglected piece.
A Typical Day for the Finance Team
Take Priya Nair, a seasoned finance controller at a mid-size FMCG distributor in Kochi. She is responsible for the petty cash management of all branches. Every month, she reconciles petty cash emails from branch accountants.
- Auto repairs for the sales van – Rs. 2,500
- Tea and snacks for staff – Rs. 1,200
- Urgent office supplies – Rs. 1,800
Each entry is as vague as the last, and yet, they add up to lakhs over a year. Lost or non-existent receipts make matters worse. The problem is that there is low visibility, low control, and high cash leakage.
Why Petty Cash Management Needs More Attention
In multi-branch operations, local teams often manage petty cash manually or with outdated spreadsheets. There’s little to no real-time tracking. This creates the perfect breeding ground for:
- Cash leakages (intentional and unintentional)
- Duplicate or fraudulent entries
- Manual errors and reconciliation nightmares
- Delayed reporting and accountability gaps
Let’s not ignore the classic Indian workaround: “Sir, we adjusted it against next month’s advance”. That is an assured one-way ticket to audit nightmares.
To put things in perspective, let’s consider a quick-service restaurant with 50 branches. Each outlet has a monthly petty cash float of Rs. 20,000. That’s Rs. 10 lakhs per month and Rs. 1.2 crore annually. If there is a cash leakage of even 10%, we are talking of Rs. 12 lakhs quietly vanishing each year.
Now imagine that money being invested in supply chain optimization, employee training, or marketing. Every rupee that slips through the cracks of inefficient petty cash management, is a rupee not going into growth or profit.
Learn more about how to manage petty cash for business spends.
The Role of AI in Business Spend Management
It’s 2025. If you’re still managing petty cash manually through emails, WhatsApp messages, and Google Sheets, it’s time for a change. Automating your petty cash management can be a game changing idea to avoid cash leakage and gain more control across branches. A few business spend management solutions are tailor-made for companies with multiple branches. These belong to sectors like retail, hospitality, IT, quick commerce, e-commerce, etc.
Here’s how automated petty cash management helps companies with multiple branches:
- Real-time visibility: Monitor spending across branches in real-time, with supporting documents and approval trails.
- Tighter control: Set spending limits and automate approvals without micromanaging.
- Prevent cash leakages: Reduce the room for misuse with every rupee tracked and tagged.
- Audit-ready reports: Make audit easier for the finance teams as there is no more last-minute scrambling before the auditors arrive.
Petty Cash Management without Approvals?
BROME Automates Approvals for Petty Cash
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Enforce Compliance with BROME
Companies with multiple branches face added challenges of managing their petty cash and ensuring compliance across branches. BROME (Branch Recurring Operating Monthly Expense) is an exclusive offering from Zaggle that caters to the specific needs of companies with multiple branches. While it is more than just petty cash management software, it has modules that help in managing petty cash seamlessly. It is an AI-powered solution that automates the process and offers multiple benefits.
- Track Every Rupee in Real Time – By using prepaid cards or corporate cards, you can get instant updates on every petty cash spend that any of your branches make.
- Set Custom Spending Rules – With BROME, you can configure your policies and define approval hierarchies and petty cash spending limits for all branches. This can further help in allocating budgets for every branch and assign spending limits for each spend category across branches.
- Prevent Fraud & Cash Leakage – Detect duplicate payments or unauthorized payments with AI. This helps you prevent fraud and reduce leakages.
- Real-time Insights – Make smarter decisions with real-time insights from each branch using the centralized dashboard. Identify unusual spending patterns in any branch.
- Seamless Payments through UPI – Pay via QR codes using the UPI facility that comes embedded in the solution.
Handling Physical Cash in Petty Cash can be Cumbersome
Pay Seamlessly using UPI with BROME
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The CFO’s Choice: Plug the Leak or Watch the Drain
In a world obsessed with big data and strategic finance, ignoring petty cash spending can be risky. For multi-branch operations, petty cash management becomes important to plug the leaks and gain tighter control. As a CFO, you must invest in solutions that offer you centralized dashboards to identify unusual spending, prevent fraud, and ensure compliance. Remember, managing petty cash is not petty and there are large sums of money that you can save with smarter solutions in place.
Stop Cash Leakage in Petty Cash Management
BROME fixes Leaks in Petty Cash
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