Insights
Best practices and tips on spend management, automated expense tracking and corporate debit cards for Australian SMB and enterprise businesses.
About the Author
Simon Lenoir is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Budgetly. A seasoned business leader with a passion for building high-performing teams, Simon brings a practical lens to finance, operations, and technology. He writes regularly about leadership, innovation, and simplifying business systems to drive impact.
Most overspending in business isn’t about reckless behaviour — it’s about missing information.
When teams don’t have visibility into what’s already been spent or approved, they fall back on assumptions. Usually safe ones:
Spend now, sort it out later.
That’s how budgets blow out. Not because people are undisciplined, but because they’re guessing in the dark.
At Budgetly, we’ve seen the opposite too — how real-time visibility at the point of spend can shift behaviour without adding friction:
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No extra approvals.
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No rigid new policies.
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Just clarity.
And suddenly:
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Duplicated subscriptions disappear.
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Over-ordering drops.
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Teams start checking before they charge.
It shows up clearly in the finance backend too:
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Fewer manual accruals.
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No more last-minute GL reclassifications.
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Fewer surprise variances to explain at month-end.
None of this overspend is malicious. But it is preventable.
Discipline isn’t the issue. Design is.
Give your team the context — not just the rules — and they’ll stay on budget, without the micromanagement.
Final Thought for CFOs:
Are you solving overspend with more rules? Or are you removing the blind spots that cause it?
Download the companion PDF: “Solving Overspend with Visibility, Not Rules.”
