Finance Leader’s Checklist: Culture-Led Compliance Tactics

Ask any CFO or finance lead about compliance, and you’ll hear familiar concerns: fraud risk, policy breaches, audit trails, and rising regulatory demands. But here’s the real kicker…

Compliance isn’t just about having the right rules. It’s about creating the right culture.

If your employees view compliance as a burden or worse, as something to work around. No amount of policies, software, or oversight will protect your business.

The Modern Compliance Dilemma

Across Australia and New Zealand, businesses of all sizes are grappling with the same challenges:

• Remote and hybrid work make traditional oversight harder

• Decentralised spending creates blind spots for finance

• Manual processes lead to errors, delays, and missed red flags

And yet, many compliance strategies still rely on outdated playbooks, rigid policies, manual checks, and the assumption that 'everyone will just follow the rules'.

What Does a Culture of Compliance Look Like?

The most successful organisations aren’t the ones with the strictest rules. They’re the ones where compliance is intuitive, embedded, and owned by everyone.

Building that culture requires more than a policy refresh. It’s about:

• Making the compliant choice the easiest one

• Educating employees without overwhelming them

• Embedding checks and balances in the tools they already use

• Giving managers the visibility and responsibility to lead by example

That might sound idealistic, but it’s 100% achievable.

Start With the Right Mindset and the Right Moves

We have worked with thousands of finance teams across ANZ to help embed compliance into everyday business practices. Our latest guide offers clear, practical tips to help you turn compliance from a cost centre into a business enabler.

Here’s a sneak peek at what’s inside:

• The 3 pillars of a compliance-first culture

• Simple tweaks that make policies easier to follow (and enforce)

• Tech-enabled guardrails that reduce risk without slowing people down

• How to engage employees and managers in proactive accountability

Whether you’re running lean in a small business or navigating complexity in a mid-sized company or an enterprise, these insights apply.

Top Tips to Build A Culture of Compliance

Work on a platform that’s ready for anything, and you’ll be ready to manage spending no matter what happens. You’ll be ready to preserve your bottom line, protect your company and its people, and ensure every digit of spend is spent the way you want.

Download tip sheet now

How to Turn Compliance from “After-Thought” to Automatic 

1. Put Guardrails Where Decisions Happen 

• Embed preferred suppliers, negotiated rates and spend limits directly into booking and expense screens. 

• Surface in-the-moment tips so travellers and buyers know what’s in policy before they click “buy”. 

• Use proactive spend requests to give approvers line-of-sight to costs and safety issues up front. 

“Push automatic reviews as close to the purchase as possible.”  

2. Let AI and Humans Tag-Team the Audit 

• Apply AI to flag duplicate receipts, round-number mileage or suspicious patterns in seconds. 

• Route only the exceptions to human auditors, keeping oversight strong without adding headcount. 

• Feed resolved cases back into the model so controls get sharper every month. 

3. Keep Controls Flexible as Rules Evolve 

• Turn policy settings into toggle switches: adjust meal caps, tax codes or ESG prompts without rebuilding workflows. 

• Tie carbon-smart choices (rail vs air) to policy nudges so sustainability goals stay on track. 

• Use spend alerts to warn budget owners when they near limits; no end-of-month surprises.  

4. Infuse Analytics at Every Step 

• Give managers real-time dashboards: what’s spent, what’s pending, what’s planned. 

• Track compliance KPIs (first-pass rate, exception volume, audit hours) and target a 10% quarterly lift. 

• Drill into supplier, category and cost-centre trends to plug leaks early.  

5. Turn Tax and Reclaim into Revenue 

• Auto-classify GST/VAT lines and attach valid invoices to maximise recovery. 

• Flag taxable employee benefits, from home-office gear to loyalty perks so you stay ATO-ready. 

• Reconcile reclaim wins against policy compliance to show stakeholders real cash back.

...download the guide for the rest of the 12-tip list

Are you ready to improve your compliance culture from this quarter?

Work on a platform that’s ready for anything, and you’ll be ready to manage spending no matter what happens. You’ll be ready to preserve your bottom line, protect your company and its people, and ensure every digit of spend is spent the way you want.

Our tip sheet distils the playbook for making compliance second nature with action points you can roll out this quarter. 

“Make the best, most compliant spending choices the easiest for employees to make.”  

Download the guide Top Tips to Build a Culture of Compliance to discover how leading ANZ organisations are rethinking their approach and making compliance a natural part of business.

Need help rolling this into your finance strategy, compliance training, or policy review? Let’s chat about how to take action without overwhelming your team.