Expense and reimbursement administration for a European software firm's India team
Engineers filing expenses through an EU HQ system meant slow reimbursements, FX errors, and missed GST input credit. We took over India-side expense admin — reimbursement cycle dropped from six weeks to five days, and previously-missed GST input credit was recovered.
Outcome
Reimbursement cycle from 6+ weeks to 5 days; previously-missed GST input credit recovered
Context
The client is a European software firm with a fourteen-person India engineering team built up over the prior two years. Engineers were submitting their expenses through the EU head office expense system.
Challenge
A few problems compounded:
- Reimbursements were taking six weeks or more. Engineers were carrying employer expenses on personal credit cards for longer than was reasonable.
- FX handling was lossy. INR-EUR conversion was inconsistent and sometimes left engineers out of pocket.
- GST input credit was being missed. Most engineer expenses against an Indian vendor carry recoverable GST, but only if the invoice is collected in the company's name and number at the point of transaction. The HQ system did not capture this, and the credit was being lost month after month.
- TDS treatment on certain expense categories was not being applied correctly.
The HQ finance team did not have the bandwidth — or the local context — to fix this from Europe.
Approach
We took over India-side expense administration end to end:
- Local prepaid corporate cards issued to each engineer, drawing on the client's India operating float
- GST-compliant invoice capture at source — engineers submit invoices addressed to the entity name and GSTIN, with reminders built into the submission flow
- Monthly reconciliation pack delivered to HQ in EUR with a locked FX rate, plus a separate GST input credit schedule for the Indian return
- TDS handled at source where applicable, with deduction certificates issued to vendors directly
Outcome
Reimbursement cycle dropped from six-plus weeks to five business days. Engineers stopped carrying employer expenses on personal cards.
The first full year recovered roughly ₹4.5 lakh in GST input credit that had previously been left on the table. That number scales with team size.
Topics covered
- India expense management for foreign employers
- GST input credit recovery for offshore team
- expense reimbursement India offshore team
- INR EUR expense reconciliation for European company
- offshore expense administration India
- India payroll and expense services for EU software firm
- TDS handling on India employee expenses
- local corporate card program India offshore engineers
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