How Linde cut expense reporting from hours to minutes at scale

Executive summary

Linde’s legacy expense system could no longer support the speed, visibility, or control its Americas organization needed. Reports took hours to complete, field employees struggled to manage paper receipts, and finance teams relied on manual work to maintain users, approval chains, and compliance. With Emburse Enterprise and Emburse Analytics, Linde reduced reporting to as little as five to ten minutes, saved administrative time, and gave leaders detailed visibility into approximately $180 million in annual card spend.

A global business had outgrown its expense system

Scott Gorski has seen nearly every stage of expense management during his 24 years at Linde. When he joined the company, employees completed expense reports on paper. They matched receipts to bank statements and sent the documents to accounts payable for review and reimbursement. Linde later moved to digital reporting, but its previous platform remained in place for approximately 15 years. What had once represented progress became a constraint as the organization expanded, technologies advanced, and expectations changed. The challenge intensified following the combination of Praxair and Linde. The newly integrated organization had to bring together different systems, operating models, policies, and processes across the Americas.

We merged to become the single largest industrial gas company in the world,” said Gorski, Executive Director of Americas Shared Services at Linde. “Taking two businesses with very different systems and processes and bringing them into one environment was a tough integration.

The expense platform could process transactions, but it was not designed to give employees or finance leaders the experience they now required. For Linde’s field workforce, the limitations were especially disruptive. Drivers, plant technicians, operations teams, and other employees could spend weeks away from their home locations. They held onto paper receipts throughout their trips, then returned to sort, scan, attach, and submit the documents. Expense work competed directly with their primary responsibilities: keeping plants operating, serving customers, and supporting the business.

The paper chase became a multi-person process

For some employees, completing an expense report was not simply inconvenient. It required several people and multiple rounds of follow-up. Linde prepared expense reports on behalf of a population of drivers and other employees who did not have regular computer access. When receipts were missing, a shared services employee contacted the worker’s superintendent or manager. The report then remained open until the missing documentation could be located and returned. A report might be touched several times by multiple people before it could move forward.

“It could take a couple of days or a week just to get the receipts,” Lebel said. “You would start the report, realize something was missing, communicate with the manager, wait for the receipt, and then go back and touch it again.”

Depending on travel schedules and receipt availability, the entire process could take two to four weeks or longer. The workload continued to grow as new reports entered the queue before older ones were resolved. Teams tracked outstanding requests through email, making it difficult to know which employees had been contacted, which receipts had arrived, and what remained incomplete. The legacy platform created other operational challenges:

• No mobile receipt capture for employees in the field
• Expense reports that could take hours to complete
• Limited line-item reporting and receipt visibility
• Manual employee setup and system access
• Manual maintenance of approval chains
• Limited controls for enforcing policy during submission
• After-the-fact compliance reporting
• Poor visibility into unsubmitted and aging transactions
• Complex support for international travel, currencies, and Canadian tax requirements
• Heavy reliance on custom reports and one-off data requests

The system captured what had already happened. It did little to guide employees or managers while spending decisions and submissions were still in motion.

Compliance arrived after the mistake

Linde had expense policies and governance processes in place, but much of the work happened outside the system. The previous platform could not consistently prevent employees from submitting multiple reports in a month, combining transaction types incorrectly, or completing reports without required documentation. It also could not reliably alert an employee to a policy issue during the submission process. Finance teams identified concerns later through separate reports. Managers then had to communicate the issues back to employees. The process was reactive. An occasional traveler might not remember that a certain transaction required a receipt or that a category had a spending threshold. Unless a manager followed up, the employee might never understand what had been out of policy.

“We could report on compliance, but it was always after the fact,” Lebel said. “We wanted to bring it to the employee’s attention while they were in the process, not after they had already submitted it.”

Managers faced a similar visibility gap. They could request reports showing team expenses, but the information was not readily available. They could not easily see detailed spending, aging card transactions, or items that had not yet been submitted. They were responsible for managing budgets without a complete view of what was coming.

Choosing a platform for where finance was going

Linde began evaluating new expense platforms with a clear understanding of its immediate pain points. The selection process also raised a broader question. What would the company need three to five years from now?

Linde evaluated Emburse alongside a major competitor. The company assembled a group of approximately 20 participants, including finance leaders, operations employees, sales professionals, managers, and plant technicians. The group needed to see how each platform would work for people across the business, not only for expense administrators. The turning point came during the Emburse Analytics demonstration. Managers saw that they could review team spending, examine individual transactions, understand what was awaiting submission, and see what other leaders were approving. Information that previously required a request to finance would be available through a dashboard.

“The light bulb went on,” Gorski said. “Managers realized they could see where their teams were spending money and what their people were approving with the click of a button.”

For Lebel, the line-item detail was equally important. Linde’s legacy reporting operated primarily at the report level. With Emburse, finance and business leaders could open a transaction, review the attached receipt, and examine the underlying information immediately.

“We had been in the old system for so long that we were almost blind to what was possible,” Lebel said. “Seeing the line-item detail and being able to pull up a receipt right away was unheard of for us.”

Mobile capabilities and analytics became the defining factors in Linde’s decision. The mobile experience addressed the needs of field employees. Analytics gave managers and finance leaders the visibility to make better decisions. Together, they created a foundation Linde could continue building on.

Making expense reporting work in the field

Linde implemented Emburse Enterprise across its Americas organization, supporting approximately 15,000 users and $180 million in annual corporate card activity. The new platform replaced a process built around desktop access and paper management with one designed to work wherever employees are. Key changes included:

• Mobile receipt capture: Employees can photograph receipts at the moment of spend instead of saving paper for the end of a trip.
• Automatic transaction matching: Receipts can be paired with the appropriate corporate card transactions, reducing manual attachment work.
• Intelligent receipt separation: When employees scan several receipts on one sheet, Emburse can identify the individual receipts and separate them for matching.
• Line-item documentation: Managers can review the receipt connected to each transaction instead of searching through a combined package of documents.
• Simpler international reporting: The platform can extract information from receipts in different languages and formats while supporting currency and tax requirements.
• Connected workflows for employees without computers: Integrations help receipts and transactions move through the system even when an employee does not use a traditional desktop workflow.
• Configurable business rules: Linde can align the submission experience with its policies and provide guidance while employees prepare reports.

The benefit is practical. Employees spend less time reconstructing trips after returning home, and shared services teams spend less time looking for missing documentation.

From hours of reporting to five or ten minutes

Before Emburse, Gorski estimated that an average employee could spend hours completing an expense report. The effort encouraged procrastination. Travelers delayed reporting because they knew they would have to sort documents, scan receipts, navigate a cumbersome platform, and correct errors later. Today, an expense report can take approximately five to ten minutes, even for frequent travelers. Employees can capture documentation as they spend. The system guides them through the submission process and gives them immediate feedback when information does not align with policy. The change has also reduced executive frustration. Gorski viewed calls from the CFO or an executive vice president about expense reporting as a sign that the process was not working. During Linde’s first nine months with Emburse, those calls stopped.

“Since we rolled out Emburse, I haven’t had calls like that,” he said. “People seem happy with it. It has made their lives easier, and our compliance is much better.”

The absence of complaints is not the only indicator of adoption. Employees who initially resisted the new platform began changing their view once they experienced the mobile workflow and faster reporting process.

Building policy into the process

Linde used the transition to Emburse as an opportunity to rethink how governance should work. Rather than checking every issue after submission, the company began configuring policies and controls within the platform. Employees now receive guidance as they prepare their reports, helping them understand requirements at the point when they can still correct an issue. The company approached this gradually. Moving from a system employees had used for more than a decade required careful change management. Linde did not immediately lock down every possible rule. It introduced controls in stages, giving employees time to learn the new process while continuously strengthening governance.

“We started slowly because it was a big change,” Gorski said. “Now compliance and governance are set within the system, and they continue to evolve.”

The platform also gives Linde flexibility across its different businesses. Policies can remain consistent where possible, while individual business units can maintain specific requirements when necessary. Lebel sees the smarter submission process as a form of employee education.

“Emburse helps us catch an issue on the first submission so the individual understands the policy going forward,” she said. “The control happens at the front end, and the result shows up in the data at the back end.”

Automating the administration behind every report

The visible employee experience was only part of the transformation. Linde also automated administrative processes that had consumed significant shared services capacity. In the previous system, team members manually entered new employees, updated user information, and maintained approval chains. Adding one person could take three to five minutes. A management change could require administrators to locate and update the employee across several approval structures. With Emburse, employee information and organizational changes can feed directly into the system. New users, departures, business transfers, and changes in reporting relationships can be reflected without the same level of manual intervention.

Lebel estimates that automated user and approval-chain maintenance saves approximately eight to ten hours each week.

“That is just one component,” she said. “Taking away the administrative work allows our team to focus on more value-added work for Linde instead of typing someone’s name and address into a system.”

The same principle applied to Linde’s support for employees without computer access. Previously, three full-time employees prepared expense reports for approximately 1,000 field users. Through Emburse and its integrations with other Linde systems, the company reduced that work to one person managing the process. The remaining employees moved into other shared services responsibilities where they could expand their skills and support higher-value work.

Turning visibility into better financial decisions

Emburse Analytics changed the conversations Linde could have about spend.

Before the implementation, managers often asked finance to produce one- off reports. Even when finance could provide the information, leaders did

not have a direct view into the transactions and obligations affecting their budgets. Now, managers can open a dashboard and see everyone within their reporting hierarchy. They can review:

• Spending by employee, team, or department
• Meals, hotels, airlines, and other expense categories
• Card transactions that have not yet been submitted
• Aging transactions
• Approval patterns
• Detailed receipts and line items
• Potential compliance trends

The information helps managers decide where behavior needs to change. It also gives finance leaders a stronger basis for reviewing policy. Linde can compare written policies with actual spending patterns and determine whether thresholds, controls, and requirements still fit the way the business operates.

For me, it’s not always about cost reduction. It’s about automating what people are doing and allowing them to focus on something else. Scott Gorski Executive Director, Americas Shared Services, Linde.

“Analytics has opened our eyes,” Lebel said. “We can look at spend at the employee level, the local level, and across the organization. Then we can ask whether our policy is really structured the right way.”

That visibility also improves budgeting and forecasting. Finance teams can better understand what has been spent and what remains unsubmitted. They can use historical patterns to inform the next month, quarter, or annual plan. Procurement can examine spending with hotels, airlines, and other suppliers. Concentrated spending may create opportunities to negotiate stronger contracts or preferred rates. Controllers can investigate cost leakage and policy trends before they become larger problems. The platform did not simply provide more reports. It gave business leaders a way to use spend information while decisions could still be influenced.

Change management built for a field-based workforce

Moving thousands of employees from a long-standing platform required more than technical implementation. Linde created training videos, presentations, reference materials, and live sessions. For approximately three months after launch, the company held open question-and-answer sessions where employees could receive individualized help. A dedicated support channel allowed users to ask questions in real time, while the company’s help desk ticketing system provided another route for troubleshooting. This support mattered because many Linde users are not technology specialists. They work in plants, drive trucks, maintain equipment, and support customers in the field. The platform needed to be intuitive, but employees also needed confidence during the transition. Linde also credits the Emburse implementation team with helping the company navigate the rollout and continue resolving issues after launch. For a large organization where communication can be difficult, the combined training and support model helped create adoption across diverse employee groups.

A partnership that keeps opening new possibilities

Linde’s relationship with Emburse extends beyond implementation. Gorski participates in customer councils and regularly shares feedback with Emburse representatives. He has seen the company respond to customer ideas and continue adapting its platform.

“I really think Emburse takes customer feedback to heart,” he said. “They listen to customers like Linde and evolve to meet their demands. That partnership is critical.”

Lebel has seen the same relationship encourage a different mindset within her own team. Under the legacy system, expense reporting was simply a task employees had to complete. With Emburse, employees and finance teams have become more curious about what else the platform can do. They are bringing new ideas to Emburse, exploring underused capabilities, and asking how future enhancements could address additional business needs.

The next destination: touchless expense reporting

For Gorski, the long-term goal is clear. He wants most employees to stop preparing traditional expense reports altogether. In that future process, Emburse would capture receipt data, match transactions, apply policy, route approvals, and move compliant expenses forward automatically. Employees and finance teams would focus only on the small percentage of transactions that require attention.

“Will it happen tomorrow? No,” Gorski said. “But I believe we can get there. The employee should only have to review what has been created and deal with the exceptions.”

Linde has already taken the important first steps. Reports that took hours now take minutes. Paper receipt searches have given way to mobile capture. Manual governance is becoming embedded control. Static reports have become accessible analytics. Administrative work is being automated so shared services professionals can focus on risk, policy, analysis, and business improvement. Linde did not simply replace an old expense tool. It created an expense operation designed to keep moving.

Results

• Reduced expense report preparation from hours to approximately five to ten minutes
• Supported approximately 15,000 users and $180 million in annual card spend
• Saved an estimated eight to ten hours each week on user and approval-chain administration
• Reduced a three-person manual reporting process to one role Redeployed shared services capacity to higher-value responsibilities
• Gave managers line-item visibility into employee and departmental spending
• Embedded policy guidance and compliance controls into submission workflows
• Simplified receipt capture and transaction matching for field employees
• Improved visibility into aging and unsubmitted card transactions
• Eliminated expense-related escalations to Gorski from senior executives during the first nine months
• Created better data for forecasting, budgeting, policy reviews, and supplier negotiations