My business partner keeps buying things without asking me

★★ signal-medium r/smallbusiness · ↑ 303 · 💬 141 · 2025-10-26 · kw: hours every day · open on reddit ↗

Tool

none

Issue

Business partner making unauthorized purchases ($3.8k equipment) and undocumented cash contractor payments via personal cards and Venmo without receipts, creating accounting chaos at tax time and visibility gaps for 50/50 partner.

Cost

$3,800+ untracked spending; unstated cumulative reimbursement total; tax audit risk

Recommendation

Operating agreement with spending approval thresholds ($100-$1k+); mandatory receipt/invoice documentation for all reimbursements; shared business card discipline; IRS compliance tracking

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

I started a small manufacturing business with my best friend from college close to two years ago. 50/50 partners. Everything was great until about six months ago or so. We have a shared business account but we both also use our personal cards for business stuff pretty regularly cuz if you're at home depot or whatever it's very normal to use whatever card is in your wallet. The problem is that he's just TERRIBLE about telling me what he bought or sending receipts. Last month I'm going through our bank statements and I see all these random Venmo transactions I don't recognize at all. Turns out he's been paying contractors in cash and venmoing himself reimbursements without documenting anything. When I asked him about it he got defensive and said I should 'trust him' and that I should not worry about it which is fucking crazy because I don't have a single bill screenshot nothing to know what was paid We've been friends for 15 years but I also need to know where our money is going because I've worked so fucking hard for this business and I barely get 6 hours of sleep every SINGLE day (including weekends) for it to work. We're not a lemonade stand we have actual obligations and I'm pretty sure our accountant is going to murder us at tax time. The worst incident was two weeks ago. He bought a 3.8k piece of equipment that we'd talked about but hadn't decided on yet. He just bought it. Using his personal card btw and he didn't mention it at all. I found out because the company that sold it called OUR business line asking about delivery and I had no idea what they were talking about and I had to play dumb on the phone When I confronted him he said he saw a good deal and didn't want to bother me and now I'm the asshole for being upset about an unauthorized 3.8k purchase? He says I'm being controlling and acting like his mom. I don't want to ruin our friendship but I also just can't run a business like this. Have any of you dealt with this? How do you set up financial boundaries with a business partner without making it weird? I'm sorry everyone for the long post but I'm not sure how to solve this and just keep the friendship at the same time

Top comments (6)

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[score=292] [deleted]

[removed]

[score=106] LoneDangerRidesAgain

It took 2 years and thousands of dollars to get rid of my business partner but it was absolutely worth it! This “bro” is not a team member or business partner and doesn’t respect you or the business. Get out while you can, it’s not easy but I assure you it will be worth it.

[score=148] need2fix2017

Bruh. Explain to him “In God We Trust, everyone else needs receipts”. Cause an audit will never “trust you bro”.

[score=246] morehatthancattle

Paying contractors in cash and Venmoing himself reimbursements, buying $3800 equipment without discussing it...Man there's something else going on. Alert Alert Alert

[score=35] Icy-Contribution-31

What's in your operating agreement about spending company money? If you don't have anything written, that's the first thing you need to do. I'd recommend that anything over a certain amount ($100? $500? $1k?) needs both partners approval. A simple text approval would even suffice. Also, not having the correct CC in your wallet is not a valid excuse. It's not that difficult to carry a company card alongside personal ones. Nothing should get reimbursed without receipts and/or invoices. IRS won't care if you trust each other or not. They want to documentation.