I'm Mike Spitz, a CPA in Gilbert, Arizona with 15+ years of corporate accounting experience--I've managed everything from VC fundraising due diligence to monthly close for tech and service companies, so I've seen expense reimbursement from both the freelancer and employer side. When I was a full-time controller before launching Spitz CPA, I regularly expensed software licenses--SmartView, specialized Excel add-ins, even a $400 annual subscription for a financial modeling tool my employer's IT didn't provision. I also billed back clients for third-party data fees when we needed industry comps for a PE pitch deck. My rule was always get written approval *before* the purchase via a quick email saying "I need X to deliver Y by Z date, cost is $___--OK to expense?" and wait for a reply I could attach to my reimbursement request. The single biggest mistake I see freelancers make is mixing business purchases onto personal cards without a clean paper trail. I keep every receipt in a dedicated Gmail label the day I spend, then log it in a simple spreadsheet with columns for date, vendor, amount, category, and client project code--takes 90 seconds per transaction and saved me twice when a client's AP department "lost" my original submission. One late payment in 2019 got resolved in two hours because I forwarded a PDF with the original email approval, the receipt, and my log entry all in one thread. If you're new to freelancing, never front four-figure expenses unless the contract explicitly lists them as reimbursable with a dollar cap and a payment timeline--I watched a freelance bookkeeper eat a $1,300 QuickBooks Advanced subscription because her client's contract only mentioned "standard software" and they considered Advanced a luxury upgrade.
Vincent Carrie operates Purple Media, a creative agency specializing in performance-based marketing with artificial intelligence solutions. I have worked as a freelancer and consultant while building teams throughout Europe and Southeast Asia. 1 / My work experience focuses on digital strategy, paid advertising, and growth consulting services. I worked as a freelancer under my personal name until I needed to rush to Berlin for a workshop, so I requested flight and hotel reimbursement from the client. That same client surprisingly rewarded me with a €300 bottle of gin six months after our work together ended. 2 / B2B SaaS and retail clients generally understood that campaign success required actual tools and personnel for execution. The ones offering better support usually maintained written guidelines or established a process requiring initial approval before any work began. 3 / The best clients maintained written expense policies or had a straightforward requirement for obtaining approval before starting. The worst would approve my expense requests over email but then disappear after I submitted the report. A verbal agreement quickly becomes worthless when the company's CFO ignores it. 4 / A European financial services company once withheld €2,000 in reimbursement payments for over a month because their payment system needed additional processing time. I stopped all work delivery and looped in our legal team by forwarding the request email. The invoice was cleared and paid three days later. 5 / I keep all client information organized through Notion and Google Drive folders with shared content access. That setup includes PDF receipts, active expense tracking, and regular financial statement reports. I inform my team via Slack about any expense over €50 before making a purchase. 6 / Any high-value item should have written approval from the client -- it only takes two seconds to send a WhatsApp message that can protect you later. If a client hesitates to approve essential expenses that support your performance, it's usually a clear sign to rethink the relationship.