If the CEO isn't watching the spend, who is?
Executive Private Office
A finance team can tell you what was spent. It rarely tells you what should never have been spent in the first place.
Part of running a private office well is looking at the things nobody else has time to look at. One of those is company spend, and specifically, the company card. Not the big-ticket contracts that get scrutinised at board level, but the smaller, steadier flow of expenses that rarely gets a second look: subscriptions nobody uses anymore, meals that quietly stretch past what was agreed, a card that gets used for things that were never really for the business.
Most CEOs assume this is covered. It usually isn't, not properly. A finance team processes what's submitted. They reconcile receipts, chase missing invoices, and close the books each month. What they are not usually resourced to do is ask why a particular spend happened at all, or notice a pattern building quietly over several months.
Where it gets brushed under the carpet.
This is the part nobody likes to say out loud: card abuse happens, and it is rarely dramatic. It is a client lunch that becomes a personal one. A subscription kept running long after the project ended. Travel booked a class above policy, once, then again, then just how it's done. Individually, each one looks small enough to let go. Together, over a year, across a team, they add up to a meaningful number, and a culture where nobody quite checks.
It gets brushed aside for reasons that are understandable, if not good ones. Nobody wants an awkward conversation with a colleague. Finance flags it once, gets pushback, and moves on. The CEO is buried in the next funding round, the next hire, the next fire. And so it continues, not because anyone decided it should, but because nobody owns watching it.
The problem is rarely one big number. It's a hundred small ones nobody added up.
What proper oversight looks like.
Real cost control isn't an annual audit or a strongly worded email about the expenses policy. It's a habit: someone actually reading the statement, line by line, every month, and asking questions when something doesn't add up. Not to catch people out, but because that visibility simply doesn't exist otherwise.
Reviewing card statements line by line, not just totals
Cancelling subscriptions and tools nobody is using
Flagging spend that drifts from policy before it becomes normal
Asking the direct, sometimes awkward question, early
Reporting back to the CEO in plain terms, not a spreadsheet
Why this sits with a private office.
This is exactly the kind of work a retained private office is built for. Not because it replaces finance, but because it holds the thing finance isn't resourced to hold: someone whose job includes looking closely, asking the plain question, and bringing it back to the person who actually needs to know. Discretion matters here too.
These conversations are sensitive, and they are handled quietly, without turning a small correction into a workplace incident.
It's a small piece of a much bigger picture, protecting the CEO's time and attention, but it's one of the ones that pays for itself. A close look at company spend, done consistently, tends to find more than it costs to look.
Someone should be watching. Let it be us
If you're a UK founder, CEO or director and this sounds familiar, you're welcome to enquire.
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