NHBC

The National House Building Council (NHBC) promotes and supports quality and safety across the industry. With around 1,400 employees – half field-based and half office-based – including 400 building inspectors making five to six visits per home, the finance team needed a way to keep things moving without the admin. 

The challenge 

Expense management was cumbersome and slow at NHBC. 

“The way the previous system worked meant that employees had to wait between six to eight weeks to be reimbursed for their out-of-pocket and mileage expenses”

Rob Essex, Financial Controller at NHBC.

As the process was outdated, employees manually logged expenses and receipts through a third-party portal. However, paper receipts would often go missing and spreadsheets were shared back and forth, creating risk. 

“It took a long time to get the money back – employees would need to keep receipts for some time to ensure they had been paid before throwing them away,”

Julia Georgiou, Business Analyst and General Secretary at NHBC. 

The finance team had little visibility and clarity over what employees were spending and where. Each month, finance received an Excel spreadsheet that had to be manually reworked, a time-consuming and error-prone process. 

Many employees failed to substantiate their card spend on time, leaving finance to chase receipts and reconcile transactions. 

For a business that prides itself on being modern, agile and digital by design, this system just didn’t fit. NHBC needed a solution that matched its needs and supported future growth. 

The solution 

NHBC switched from HSBC corporate credit cards to Soldo user cards, with enabled automatic weekly transfers.  

Employees now spend pre-authorised company money and every transaction is automatically logged and tied to a cost centre, making it easy to see who’s paying what and where. The team also made specific input fields – like receipts – mandatory, making compliance and control simpler and stronger. 

With expense policies built directly into the Soldo app, everyone knows what’s in and out of scope. Managers can approve a full or partial claim, offering flexibility that was not possible before.  

“If I weren’t a regular user of the policy, then having it integrated within the app would really help because it would show whether I had exceeded the policy amount straight away,” says Julia. 

Now, employees can submit expenses in seconds. Finance has complete visibility and receives fewer questions from employees wondering when they’ll get paid. 

“My favourite thing – and it’s the same for most people who use Soldo – is the smartphone app. We’ve had lots of positive feedback from employees. Some employees prefer to use the web console, so having both options is great,” says Rob. 

For the business, adoption has been strong, with Soldo even featured at NHBC’s internal company-wide event – a reflection of how embedded it’s become in daily operations. 

NHBC has issued departmental cards for its operations team, allowing the central admin team to purchase on behalf of the 400 field-based employees. This removes the need for building inspectors to manage local expenses. 

All mileage and out-of-pocket expense are put through user cards and claims are now reimbursed immediately through Bank Transfer, while Company Wallets manage team and departmental budgets with weekly top-ups. 

The results 

Today, more than 1,300 NHBC employees use Soldo to support day-to-day spending. Reimbursement takes one week instead of six to eight. Pre-set rules, pre-approved spending, and full visibility keep everything compliant and simple.  

“We have found that our employees now claim in real-time. If someone pays for parking at an event, by the time they have walked through the foyer, they have uploaded a receipt and claimed the expense. It’s a great improvement in management information,” says Rob. 

The finance team now spends less time processing and more time planning and analysing. “Soldo has freed up time for us to do other activities and move away from 95% processing and 5% thinking to 50% processing and 50% thinking”, says Rob. “It has helped us advance our modern, agile and digital by default agenda.” 

NHBC uses Power BI dashboards fed by Soldo data to track trends, improve reporting, and even support its financial crime forum, which meets quarterly. 

Month-end is smoother because processes run throughout the month. The new system has reduced the time spent on reporting by NHBC’s finance team and improved financial data quality. 

Employees appreciate the flexibility, too.

“The receipt capture function is really useful as receipts are submitted quickly and painlessly. The Soldo app has saved time for those making claims,” adds Julia. 

The conclusion 

By moving to Soldo, NHBC has transformed expense management from a slow, manual process into a faster, fairer system that works for everyone. Employees are reimbursed in a week instead of eight, and finance gets complete visibility of spending. 

Month-end is smoother as the data is cleaner, and time once spent chasing receipts is spent on strategy and decision-making. The impact has been so profound that NHBC’s procurement team is now exploring ways to extend the solution to other areas of spend management. 

Soldo has helped NHBC live up to its promise of being modern, agile and digital by design – freeing people to focus on the work that matters. 

Managing expenses at NHBC was slow and manual. Employees paid out-of-pocket and held onto receipts for weeks while waiting for reimbursements, which took up to two months. The finance team wanted a faster, fairer, and more compliant way to manage expenses that reflected NHBC’s digital-first approach. With Soldo, every employee can now spend responsibly and submit instantly – and finance gets full visibility of where money is going.