Every Friday the same twenty minutes: review what was spent, split the card charges from what people fronted, send one wire, record the reference, and shut the period. A locked week is a week nobody re-litigates.
Settlement is a ritual, not a project. The order matters because each step depends on the one before it being finished and unarguable.
The week’s queue, photograph beside extracted lines. Approve, reassign, flag, or reject. Nothing enters settlement carrying a question — a flagged expense rolls to next week with its thread intact.
One page per person and per card: what was spent, on which project, on which phase, with running totals. It is the document you would want if someone asked about a number in November.
Company card charges are already paid — they only need to be posted and reconciled against the statement. What a PM covered with their own card or cash becomes a reimbursement owed. Two piles, drawn automatically, never mixed.
Send the transfer from your bank, then write down the amount, the date, and the reference number. The reimbursement is not closed by intent. It is closed by a reference you can search for.
The period seals with your name on it. Actuals in that window stop moving, the phase totals stop drifting, and the number you reported on Friday is the number that is still there on Monday.
The card side needed no payment — it needed posting. The out-of-pocket side is a single wire instead of four apologies. Both sides carry the phase, so the ledger moves the moment the week closes.
A sub invoice arrives as one number for a scope that touched four budget lines. Before it gets paid, it gets split — and every dollar of it lands where the work was done.
Half the arguments on a build are about a figure that quietly moved after somebody quoted it. A locked week ends that category of conversation.
Review, split, wire, lock. Free on one project, every feature, no card.