Set up Expense Assistant

You can set up Expense Assistant to work as per the requirements of your organization. To do this, you need to be assigned the Corporate Card Account Administration role. You use the Manage Auto Submission and Matching Options page to set up Expense Assistant.

To access this page, in the Setup and Maintenance work area, go to the following:

• Offering: Financials

• Functional Area: Expenses

• Task: Manage Auto Submission and Matching Options

The Manage Auto Submission and Matching Options page provides different options to configure Expense Assistant. Here are the different settings you can configure using this page:

• Set up automatic submission of expenses

• Configure matching expenses with corporate card expenses

• Manage synonyms for expense types

• Configure expense digest

• Enable electronic receipt processing

• Configure notification email

By default, these settings apply to all business units. However, you can also modify these settings for individual business units. To do this, select a business unit in the Specific Business Unit section of the Manage Auto Submission and Matching Options page. The Edit Auto Submit and Matching Options dialog box has the following tabs where you can configure settings for specific business units:

• Edit Auto Submit and Matching Options

• Email Digest Options

• Electronic Receipt Setup

Note: Settings for matching expenses with corporate card charges apply to all business units and can't be configured separately for a business unit.

Set up Automatic Submission of Expenses

After an employee creates an expense item using Expense Assistant, it needs to be submitted for approval and further processing. Your company can automatically submit expense items, which are ready for submission, as part of an expense report. This ensures that if an expense is ready, it's submitted without waiting for the end user to submit the expense manually. To enable this automatic submission, schedule the Automatically Submit Expense Reports process once or twice a week. You use the options in the Auto Submission for Expenses Digital Assistant section to configure this feature. Here are the options available in the section:

Option	Description
Schedule	Use this option to enable automatic submission of expense items. By default, this option is set to No.
Frequency	Specify the days of the week when the automatic submission process will run. This option is enabled when the Schedule option is set to Yes. By default, none of the days is selected. You must choose at least one day in a week otherwise the automatic submission process isn't run even when the Schedule option is set to Yes.

Expenses Eligible for Automatic Submission

If a user doesn't have a corporate card, these expense items are eligible for automatic submission:

• Expense items were created using the digital assistant.

• There's no missing information.

• Receipts are attached when required.

• Policy violations have justification.

If a user has a corporate card, these expense items are eligible for automatic submission:

• Expense items were created using the digital assistant and corporate card wasn't used.

• Expense items were created using the digital assistant and exactly matched to corporate card charges.

• Tip charges on corporate card from merchants, such as Uber and Lyft, where a receipt was sent for the base fare.

Expenses Not Eligible for Automatic Submission

Here are the expense items created from the digital assistant that aren't eligible for automatic submission:

• Expense items with missing information.

• An expense item that matches multiple corporate card charges.

• A corporate card charge that matches with multiple expenses.

• Expenses that violate company policies.

Configure Matching Expenses with Corporate Card Expenses

When a corporate card user creates an expense using Expense Assistant they can specify the payment method as either corporate card or personal funds. When a user specifies the payment method as corporate card, the application looks for a matching corporate card charge. If the match is found, the application merges the expense, assigns an expense type, and makes the expense ready for submission. If the application doesn't find a matching corporate card charge, it waits for a match indefinitely. In some cases, the application may match a corporate card charge to multiple expenses and sometimes it's the other way around. In such cases, the user must resolve the match using the Expenses web application.

Based on your company's requirements, you can configure how the application matches the expenses created by Expense Assistant with the corresponding corporate card expenses. Here are the settings you configure to match expense items:

• Category matching tolerance

• Merchant matching tolerance

Category Matching Tolerance

You can specify the matching tolerance for different categories of expenses. This helps in matching the digital assistant expenses to their corresponding credit card charges. The matched expenses and credit card charges are merged and can be submitted automatically without user intervention. Here are the different matching parameters you can configure for different categories of expenses:

Parameter	Description
Amount Variance Percentage	The percentage variance in amount that's used to determine whether a digital assistant expense and a credit card charge match. You can specify any value between 0% and 50%. Use this field to accommodate any extra charges that are charged to the credit card by a hotel, restaurant, taxi, and other similar vendors. The default value for meals and entertainment expenses is 20% and 0% for the other expenses.
Amount Variance Direction	The direction in which the amount variance is applied. Here are the possible values: More than the Digital Assistant: Use for cases where the credit card charges are greater than the Expense Assistant amount, such as for meals with tips. Less than the Digital Assistant: Use for cases where the credit card charges are less than the Expense Assistant amount, such as for Uber or Lyft taxi ride with a tip. Both The default for meals and entertainment expenses is More than the Digital Assistant and Both for the other expenses.
Days Variance	The variance in the date of expense that's used to determine whether a digital assistant expense and a credit card charge match. The default value for accommodation, meals, and entertainment expenses is 2 days and 0 days for the other expenses.

Merchant Matching Tolerance

Expenses for some merchants may deviate from the general variance of their category. For example, they may record tip as a separate corporate card expense. To manage such cases, you can specific matching tolerance values. Here are the parameters you can specify to configure specific matching tolerance for a merchant.

• Amount Variance Percentage: The percentage variance in amount that's used to determine whether a digital assistant expense and a credit card charge match. The default value is 20%.

• Amount Variance Direction: The direction in which the amount variance is applied. The default value is Less than the Digital Assistant.

• Days Variance: The variance in the date of expense that's used to determine whether a digital assistant expense and a credit card charge match. The default value is 1 day.

• Wait Days for Tip Charge: The number of days a taxi trip charge waits for the corresponding taxi tip charge to be picked for automatic submission. The default value is 5 days.

Here is how you can add or remove a merchant:

1. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, go to the following:

   • Offering: Financials

   • Functional Area: Expenses

   • Task: Manage Expense Report Auditing Lookup Types

2. On the Manage Expense Report Auditing Lookup Type page, enter ORA_EXM_MATCH_MERCHANT_NAME in the Lookup Type field and click Search.

3. You will notice that Uber and Lyft are already mentioned in the Financials Generic Lookup Type section. You can add more merchants as per the requirements of your organization

Manage Synonyms for Expense Types

When an employee creates an expense using a conversation, Expense Assistant predicts the expense type from the information provided in the conversation. Expense Assistant uses the expense types defined in the setup and their preconfigured synonyms to determine the expense type for an expense. A complete list of expense types across all business units is stored in the Expense Assistant. However, only the expense types that applicable to business units of a user are made available to them. You can view the list of all expense types and their synonyms in the Synonyms for Expense Types section.

The list contains an existing set of synonyms for each expense type. To improve the conversational experience of your employees and reduce additional questions from the Expense Assistant, you can add commonly used terms, or synonyms, for different expense types. For example, lunch, dinner, and so on are all synonyms for meal in this context. Similarly, when you add a new expense type, you can define synonyms for that expense type.

Here is how you can add synonyms for an expense type:

1. In the Synonyms for Expense Types section, click the expense type for which you want to add synonyms.

2. In the dialog box for the expense type, click Edit.

3. In the Synonyms text area, enter the new synonyms separated by commas.

4. Click Save.

After synonyms are added, the information has to be synchronized so that updates made to expense types and their synonyms are available to Expense Assistant. You can use the Turn off Auto Sync option to configure synchronization of expense items and synonyms. By default, the option is set as No, which allows automatic synchronization during the next run of the Automatically Submit Expense Reports process.

Note: If you haven't scheduled the Automatically Submit Expense Reports process, run this process to sync information of expense types and their synonyms with the Expense Assistant.

Configure Expense Digest

The expense digest is a notification email delivered to the user's email. It includes an overview of all expenses and highlights the expenses that require the user's attention, such as items with missing information, possible matches to corporate card charges, outstanding corporate card charges, and so on. For more information, see the Configure Expense Digest topic in the Expenses Configuration chapter.

Enable Electronic Receipts Processing

Your company can choose to allow employees to create their expenses by mailing electronic expense receipts. For example, employees can forward electronic receipts, such as receipts from Uber and Lyft from their emails to a designated email. The application then uses the details in the electronic receipt to create expense items using the settings configured for the Expense Assistant.

You use the options in the Electronic Receipt Setup section to configure processing of electronic receipts. Here are the options available in the section:

Option	Description
Enable Electronic Receipts Processing	Use this option to enable the processing of electronic receipts. By default, this option is set to No.
Forwarding Email	Displays the email generated by the application to which employees can forward their electronic receipts for expense creation. To generate this email, you set the Enable Electronic Receipts Processing option to Yes and then run the Create Expenses from Email Receipts process.
Custom Alias	Specify a custom email to which employees can forward their electronic receipts for expense creation. Setting a custom alias is optional.

Here are the high-level steps to set up the custom alias:

1. Work with your IT administrator to create an email address where users can forward their electronic receipts. You may want to create an email in your organization's domain, for example [e-mail]. It is recommended not to use an existing account on the mail system.

2. Work with the IT administrator to set up server side redirect on the message transfer agent (MTA) that handles the outbound emails. All email messages addressed to the newly created email must be routed to the forwarding email. The employee's email address mentioned in the original email message should be preserved when the messages are routed because that's used to identify the sender.

3. In the Electronic Receipt Setup section of the Manage Auto Submission and Matching Options page, enter the newly created email in the Custom Alias field.

4. To verify the setup, send test electronic receipts to the custom alias and then check if receipts are processed.

Note: When you specify the custom alias email, employees can send their electronic receipts to both the custom email and the forwarding email for creation of expenses.

Configure Notification Email

Expense Assistant sends these notification emails to employees:

• Electronic receipt processing notifications

• Expense digest emails

You use the options in the Notification Email for Electronic Receipt and Expense Digest section to configure the email address from which notification emails are sent to employees. These are the options available in the section:

Option	Description
Default Email	Displays the default email from which notification emails are sent to employees. This is a read-only field and the default value is Oracle Expenses <[e-mail]>.
Custom Alias	If you don't want to send notification emails from the default email, specify a custom email from which employees receive notification emails.

Note: When you specify the custom alias email, employees receive notification emails only from the custom email.