By: James Rowell, Founder and Managing Director, Capture Expense
School workload has become one of the defining discussions in education. Debate typically focuses on teaching hours, marking, lesson preparation, inspections and reporting obligations. While these pressures are undoubtedly significant, they have also created a tendency to view workload through a relatively narrow lens.
What often receives less attention is the administrative burden that exists alongside those responsibilities. Not because it is unimportant, but because it is rarely measured in the same way. Administrative work is fragmented, it is spread across individuals, departments and processes, making it harder to quantify despite being deeply embedded in day-to-day operations.
This distinction matters because workload is not created solely by large responsibilities. In many organisations it accumulates through small, repetitive tasks that feel insignificant in isolation but become substantial when repeated across hundreds of employees and thousands of interactions.
For schools and academy trusts, expense management provides a useful example. Most organisations would struggle to identify expense claims as a major operational issue. They are typically viewed as routine administrative processes. Staff submit receipts, mileage is approved, claims are reimbursed and records are retained for audit purposes. The process functions and, because it functions, it rarely attracts scrutiny.
However, that same logic can mask inefficiency. Administrative processes tend to be judged according to whether they eventually reach an outcome rather than how much organisational effort is required to get there. As a result, activities that consume large amounts of collective time, such as chasing receipts or processing mileage claims, often remain untouched because no individual step appears problematic enough to justify change.
The problem with familiar processes
This is particularly common in schools. Digital transformation has accelerated across many areas over the last decade, yet back-office processes frequently remain reliant on spreadsheets, email workflows, paper documentation and manual intervention. These approaches are familiar, and familiarity can create a false sense of efficiency. A process that has existed for years begins to feel inevitable rather than optional.
The challenge is not usually a lack of capability. Most schools understand the importance of financial control, transparency and governance. The challenge is that compliance frequently becomes associated with additional administration. More forms, more approvals and more checks are introduced with the intention of strengthening oversight. Over time, the process grows increasingly complex despite the desired outcome remaining unchanged.
Expense management is particularly vulnerable to this. Unlike payroll or budgeting, it is rarely viewed as a strategic priority. Claims are processed, staff are reimbursed and finance teams move on to the next task. Yet beneath the surface, a surprising amount of time can be consumed collecting receipts, correcting errors, checking policy compliance and chasing missing information. As these tasks are dispersed across different individuals, departments and sites, their cumulative impact is easy to underestimate.
The hidden cost of administrative friction
The consequence is that administrative workload becomes distributed throughout the organisation. Finance teams spend time chasing information while managers review claims alongside their existing responsibilities. Meanwhile, employees hold onto receipts, revisit submissions and respond to requests for clarification.
This is often where schools and educational institutions lose efficiency. Rather than the result of major operational failures, this efficiency is lost through processes that require small amounts of effort from large numbers of people. Every manual step introduces another opportunity for delay, duplication or inconsistency. Every approval that sits in an inbox waiting for action creates additional administration elsewhere in the process.
The challenge here is not that these activities are difficult, rather, it is that they are constant. For multi-academy trusts, this can become even more pronounced. Processes that may be manageable within a single school often becomes more complex when spread across multiple sites, multiple approval structures and larger members of staff. Visibility becomes harder, reporting requirements increase and administrative effort grows accordingly. A simple milage claim, for example, may need approval from a line manager, a school business manager and a central finance function before reimbursement can be processed. Equally, receipts for training courses, educational visits or classroom resources can become delayed or misplaced as they move between individual schools and centralised trust finance teams. The result? Additional follow-up work for everyone involved.
Compliance should not come at the expense of efficiency
This is why administrative processes deserve greater scrutiny than they often receive. The objective should not be to remove governance or weaken controls. Schools operate within a highly accountable environment, and robust financial procedures remain essential.
However, there is an important distinction between effective control and administrative complexity. All too often, organisations assume the two are inseparable but in reality, the strongest controls are frequently those that are easiest to follow. When processes are straightforward, staff are more likely to complete them correctly and consistently. When information is captured at the point is generated, compliance becomes part of the workflow rather than an additional burden layered on top of it.
As schools continue to look for efficiencies, attention is understandably focused on large-scale initiatives and transformational projects. Yet some of the most meaningful improvements may come from examining everyday processes that have simply been accepted over time. Whether it is a teacher waiting to be reimbursed for classroom resources, a finance officer chasing missing receipts, or a manager approving claims through multiple email exchanges, these routine administrative tasks often consume far more collective time than organisations realise.
The conversation around workload is unlikely to disappear any time soon and nor should it. But if schools are serious about understanding where time is being lost, the focus cannot be confined solely to teaching responsibilities. Administrative workload forms part of the same picture. The most significant operational challenges are not always the most visible, sometimes they are the processes that have become so familiar that nobody thinks to question them.
