How Email-Based Expense Completion Works

Email-based expense completion allows employees to create and complete supported expenses through natural language email conversations without signing in to Oracle Expenses.

It streamlines expense reporting by reducing manual data entry, capturing required information earlier, improving data quality and compliance, and accelerating expense submission and reimbursement.

If any required information is missing, Expenses Agent requests the details by email, processes employee replies, and updates the expense until it’s ready for submission.

Note:

To use email-based expense completion, enable the following:

• Email-Based Expense Completion Using Expenses Agent FSM opt-in
• EXM_AGENTIC_EMAIL_PROCESSING profile option

See Enable Email-Based Expense Completion and Expense Policy Inquiry.

Workflow

1. Forward a receipt.

   Employees forward receipts for meals, flights, hotels, and other business expenses to the organization’s configured expense forwarding email address. They can also include additional expense information in the email, such as the expense type, payment source, business justification, company, cost center, project, task, or personal expense amount.

2. Complete the expense by email.

   If additional information is required, Expenses Agent sends an email requesting only the missing details needed to complete the expense. Employees reply in natural language by using the Reply button in the email or by sending a standard email reply. Expenses Agent processes the response and automatically updates the expense.

   Note: Expenses Agent doesn’t use the email subject line to extract or update expense information. Include all expense information in the email body when forwarding receipts or replying to Expenses Agent emails.

3. Submit the expense.

   When all required information has been collected, the expense is marked Ready to Submit or submitted automatically if automatic submission is enabled.

4. Complete unsupported scenarios in Oracle Expenses.

   If the expense can’t be completed through email, Expenses Agent directs the employee to Oracle Expenses to complete it manually.

Supported Email Updates

Employees can update the following expense information through email:

• Description
• Merchant
• Expense type
• Expense date
• Receipt amount
• Personal amount
• Business justification
• Payment source
• Company
• Cost center
• Project
• Task
• Employee attendees
• Nonemployee attendees
• Customer or partner organization
• Mark expense as personal

For best results, employees should provide exact values whenever possible, such as employee email addresses, project names, task numbers, cost centers, and configured values.

When Employees Must Use Oracle Expenses

Employees must switch to the Oracle Expenses application when:

• The requested field or action isn’t supported through email. For example, Tax Classification Code.
• Expenses Agent can’t resolve the requested value.
• The email conversation reaches the maximum of two guided reply turns.
• The expense contains more than three validation errors.
• A required correction must be completed in Oracle Expenses.

Note: When Expenses Agent directs employees to Oracle Expenses, they should complete the expense in the application instead of continuing to reply to the email conversation.

Recommendations

Oracle recommends validating these capabilities with a small group of pilot users before enabling them for your entire organization.

During pilot testing, validate the complete email workflow, including:

• Receipt forwarding
• Expense creation
• Guided requests for missing information
• Employee email replies
• Automatic expense updates
• Routing unsupported scenarios to Oracle Expenses