How London Luton Airport cut expense processing time from 15 minutes, to under a minute.
London Luton Airport is one of the UK’s busiest, operating under the ownership of AENA, the Spanish airport group.
Minhaj Haque works in the finance team, handling invoice processing, employee expense claims and the corporate card side for directors, reporting figures up to AENA every month.
Before Webexpenses, London Luton ran expenses through Focal Point, an old system also used for purchase orders.
It worked, but it was slow and heavy on admin. When the finance team decided it was time for something more modern, they brought in NetSuite for finance and shortlisted three expense providers to sit alongside it, checking each one for integration ease before deciding.
Webexpenses won out. The interface matched NetSuite closely, the integration was simple, and the platform was easy to use from every angle, for employees submitting claims, for accounts processing them and for directors approving them.
The rollout came with a few snags. In one instance, two employees shared the same name, and the NetSuite integration occasionally routed expenses to the wrong person. Webexpenses’ support team resolved it by giving every employee a longer, unique external ID.
“The support has been great. I think Maisie's been fantastic. She's been really, really helpful and has helped us sort all this out.”
London Luton’s directors used to keep a stack of paper receipts, photocopying each one before uploading it to the old system. With the Webexpenses app, they photograph a receipt on the go, and the platform automatically reads it and matches it to the right expense line.
That simplicity runs across the whole team. Around 540 employees use the platform, and Minhaj personally processes between 150 and 200 expenses a month, mostly for travel and for entertaining customers and staff.
The corporate card side has changed too. Directors’ Barclaycard transactions now feed live into Webexpenses through the corporate card feed, so approvers, including directors’ PAs, can see and approve spend as it happens rather than waiting on a statement.
Processing a single expense now takes Minhaj under a minute, down from 10 to 15 minutes on the old system. That saving adds up daily, and it’s freed him up to focus on monthly reporting for AENA, work that used to take a week and now takes a fraction of that. Month-end, once spread across several days, is now a single day’s task.
Approvers have felt the change too. Directors and their PAs can sign off claims from the app while travelling, rather than working through a backlog once they’re back at a desk.
“I go in every morning, click into it, and know it will take me half an hour at most to get through 20 or 30 expenses. Webexpenses has changed my way of working.”
Support has kept pace with that shift. Step-by-step video guides cover common questions, and queries to the Webexpenses team rarely go a full day without a reply.
London Luton is now piloting Webexpenses corporate cards with one director ahead of a wider rollout to replace Barclaycard. Two things drew the finance team to the switch: cashback on every transaction, and the chance to cut the monthly fees that come with a traditional card provider.
If you’re weighing up whether a native card is worth the switch, London Luton’s approach is a sensible one to borrow. Start with one frequent traveller, see how the cashback and reporting compare with your current provider, then extend it once you’re confident it works for your team.
Want to give your team the flexibility to manage expenses their way? Get in touch to find out how Webexpenses cards could work for your business.
