Approving an expense (lunch, travel, small purchase) often takes 5-10 days from submission to reimbursement. That frustrates employees and burns finance time. Here's how to drop it under 24 hours.
Employees waiting days for reimbursement approval
Managers buried under dozens of approval tickets
Expense policies applied inconsistently
Incomplete audit trail — hard to verify at audit
Over-budget expenses caught months later
Thresholds (under $100 auto-approved, over $500 manager approval, over $5K CFO), allowed categories, required documentation. This is the foundation.
Employee photographs receipt in app/Slack. AI extracts: vendor, amount, tax, date, category. No manual entry.
System checks: within policy? Vendor on allowed list? Right category? Documentation complete? Only exceptions escalate to humans.
Based on thresholds: auto-approved (under $100), direct manager (101-500), department head (501-2000), CFO (2001+). Instant Slack/Teams notification.
Approver sees receipt + context + relevant policies. Approves or rejects with one click. Under 30 seconds per expense.
Approved expense goes into next payroll cycle (employee reimbursement) or to accounting (ERP entry). Full audit trail kept.
Build custom if you have complex policies (multi-entity, multi-country), deep ERP integration (SAP, NetSuite), or specific compliance requirements (tax audit, EU funds). For SMBs, Spendesk/Pleo + accounting integration may be enough.
For typical receipts (chains, restaurants, taxis), 95-99% accuracy. For rare/poorly written ones, 85-90% — and we escalate to humans for confirmation.
Typical 5-10 days → under 24 hours (about 80-90% reduction). Expenses below thresholds approved in seconds.
AI detects suspicious patterns: duplicate receipts, unusual amounts for category, systematically just-below-threshold expenses, etc. Annual auto-audits.
Yes. Tools like Spendesk, Brex, Pleo issue virtual cards and integrate directly with the approval workflow. No lost receipts.
For a standard workflow (with Spendesk/Pleo), 4-6 weeks. For custom integration with internal ERP, 8-12 weeks.
30 minutes, no pitch — we’ll tell you honestly if it’s worth automating.
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