With travel now meeting or exceeding pre-pandemic levels, odds are higher than ever that out-of-policy expenses are flowing through your expense process. How do you stop these in their tracks, before they cause damage to your business?
An AI that knows company policy as well as you do
AppZen Expense Audit uses the power of the Mastermind AI Automation Platform to look deep into your expense reports, and into each and every receipt. It understands and interprets not only what the receipt says in extraordinary detail, but also what it means.
For example, a hotel receipt might have a large number of line items. Just looking at the data entered on the expense report will tell you the number of nights, the total spent, and the name and location of the hotel. That’s great for basic reporting and compliance (was the traveler staying in a reasonable property for that location?) but not much about the nature of the spend (what did the traveler do while they were there?). AppZen, on the other hand, looks much deeper.
If there’s a minibar charge, we’ll spot it. In-room movie? We’ll know. Stop at the spa for a massage, and try to reimburse it? Not so fast.
Sometimes these expenses are unintentional. Maybe someone grabbed a non-work drink with a friend at the hotel bar and forgot to remove that from the reimbursable amount. But intent isn’t really relevant when it’s time to apply your policy. And catching issues like this can help educate employees so on their next trip, they’ll be more careful.
No “beer goggles” on this finance AI
Let’s look a little bit deeper. It’s one thing to read and understand “minibar” or “in-room movie” on any hotel folio. There’s a lot of horsepower behind an AI that can accurately flag those keywords from the receipt image, even when it’s blurry or faded. But you’re still going to make some mistakes if your AI isn’t more sophisticated.
If you have a policy that restricts alcohol and tobacco purchases, what happens when someone buys a shrimp cocktail, a root beer float, or a cigar bourek (one of my favorite Turkish appetizers)? You don’t want an expense auditing system full of false positives — situations where the system has identified a risk that isn’t really there.
A human auditor (especially one who loves Mediterranean food) will know that the above examples are all totally fine. You want AI auditing that is equally nuanced.
The reverse receipt situation is also true. If someone orders a Grey Goose on the rocks, the receipt might just say “Grey Goose.” Your AI needs to know alcohol brands to be able to understand what that line item actually is.
Does your current expense auditing system know what to do when your policy is different for different groups of employees? Can it automatically adjust based on the funding source, such as for a client-billable or grant-funded project?
Your policy compliance magnifying glass
AppZen makes it easy to dynamically apply different policies and thresholds, enable keyword checks, and accurately review line items for both the expense description and its true meaning.
With the power of Mastermind, the world’s most intelligent, finance-focused AI platform, AppZen’s Expense Audit can flag and disallow 100% of out-of-policy expense types, even when receipts are masked by mislabelling on expense lines. You can achieve best-in-class accuracy in identifying out-of-policy expenses using the AI’s understanding of natural language, brands, and commonly-used expressions.
What’s more, AppZen’s AI wizardry directly translates to what you can achieve with our analytics features. Only AppZen Expense Audit provides analytics based directly on AI audits, giving you confidence in exactly what out-of-policy spend is being flagged, so you can tailor your education and training efforts. This is the policy compliance magnifying glass you need.
