The Cost of Standing Still: Why Charities Must Digitise Expenses

I’ve been talking to one of the UK’s largest charities for five years. Yes, five! About paying volunteer expenses. Last week, I checked in, thinking surely they’d found a solution by now… nope. Still manually processing every expense as a bank transfer.

Let’s spell that out: volunteer expense reimbursements arrive by email in a spreadsheet or Word doc, with receipts attached separately. If something doesn’t match? The email ping-pong starts. (20% of expenses have issues, you do the maths)

There are huge disadvantages in paying volunteer expenses manually:

• Time sink: £6 of staff time to pay a £3 expense.

• Hidden costs: the false belief that because John and Ahmed are “permanent employees,” their time doesn’t cost the organisation.

• Compliance risks: higher error rates and audit headaches. Manual entry means typos, missed receipts, and late reimbursements.

• Frustrated volunteers: slow payments impact retention and satisfaction.

• Lack of visibility: no real-time data for reporting or audits, and reconciling accounts is a slog.

And here’s the kicker: staying manual means you’re locking yourself out of AI. Without clean, structured expense data, you can’t:

• Forecast cash flow or budget needs accurately.

• Benchmark across projects or optimise funding use.

• Use tools like predictive analytics or automated reporting, because your “data” is just a pile of emailed spreadsheets.

• Carry out compliance checks efficiently, with the right reports, AI can automatically check claims against policy or funder requirements.

If you can’t digitise the basics, you’re not just behind, you’re invisible to the digital transformation already reshaping funding, reporting, and compliance.

So how do you move forward and de-risk your decision-making? Too many charities freeze out of fear of choosing wrong. But doing nothing is often the most expensive choice. With the right guardrails, you can make smarter, safer decisions without stalling progress. Here are a few tips:

1. Get Hands-On Before You Commit

When shortlisting suppliers, insist on a proper hands-on trial. During my corporate life, I never moved a supplier forward without testing their product in a real environment. If a supplier refuses, that’s a red flag. When they hand you the keys to a test environment, it shows confidence in their user experience.
At vHelp, we do exactly this, letting vetted clients explore our volunteer expense management platform freely in a test environment gives huge relief and clarity.

2. Start Small With Short Contracts

Negotiate a short-term contract, one year is plenty, to pilot the solution in one department or region. Evaluate its impact, then roll it out gradually. Large charities should feel empowered to set these terms rather than accept rigid vendor timelines.

3. Stop Hunting for a Panacea

Even global corporates rarely find a single solution that fits every team’s needs. It’s acceptable, even smart, to choose complementary tools for different functions, as long as they integrate or at least coexist without friction.

4. Quantify the Hidden Costs of Doing Nothing

Build a business case and assign a real monetary value to staff time spent on manual tasks. When leadership sees £6 spent to process a £3 expense, it reframes “status quo” as a very expensive choice.

to a future with AI-driven analytics and smarter decision-making.

Charities that modernise their volunteer expense processes and reimburse volunteer expenses efficiently will be far better positioned to forecast budgets, attract funding, and retain loyal volunteers.

Reimburse volunteer expenses quickly and securely with vHelp, the UK’s trusted platform for automated volunteer expense payments.
With 24-hour payments, built-in compliance checks, and detailed reporting, vHelp gives charities total expense visibility and control.