Overview of Expenses Agent

Expenses Agent delivers a modern, streamlined expense management experience designed to minimize manual data entry and accelerate processing times.

Employees can use Expenses Agent throughout the expense lifecycle, from capturing and completing expenses to allocating, validating, and submitting them. Expenses Agent automates many expense management activities and prompts employees when information or action is required, allowing employees to spend less time managing expense reports.

Expenses Agent is the AI agent that orchestrates this experience. It processes receipts, extracts expense details, creates and completes expenses, matches expenses with corporate card transactions when applicable, and requests missing information from employees. Depending on your configuration, Expenses Agent also supports capabilities such as automatic itemization, spend authorizations, expense allocation, accounting segments, spending limits, and cash advance application.

Key Concepts and Capabilities

• Expenses Agent vs. Touchless Expenses: Touchless Expenses describes the employee experience and business outcome: employees rarely need to build expense reports manually. Expenses Agent is the AI agent that delivers that experience. It receives emailed receipts, extracts expense information, creates and completes expense items, matches them with corporate card transactions, validates them against company policy, and proactively follows up with employees to resolve missing information. The agent orchestrates the end-to-end expense process, while the user interface, whether Oracle Expenses or another interaction surface, is used only for the small number of scenarios the agent can’t fully resolve on its own.
• Expenses Agent capabilities include:
  • Expense capture and creation, including automated expense creation, receipt processing, corporate card matching, reimbursable expense creation, and automatic itemization.
  • Expense completion and employee interaction, including conversational completion, corporate card notifications, real-time card notifications, and mobile expense management.
  • Expense management and allocation, including spend authorizations, expense locations, account splits, project and task allocations, and configured accounting segments.
  • Policy and spending controls, including AI-powered policy inquiries and applicable monthly and yearly spending limits.
  • Expense report completion and submission, including cash advance application and configurable automatic submission.

For details about these capabilities, see Expenses Agent Capabilities.

How it Works

The exact experience depends on the capabilities, policies, and expense configuration for your organization. A typical expense can progress through these stages:

1. Forward and capture: An employee charges a business expense and forwards an e-receipt or receipt photo to a dedicated company email alias.
2. Expense creation and matching: Expenses Agent extracts relevant transaction information and creates the expense. When applicable, it matches the expense with the corresponding corporate card transaction. For accommodation expenses, Expenses Agent can also create itemized lines automatically when itemization is required.
3. Expense completion: Expenses Agent determines whether additional information is required. Depending on the expense and your configuration, this information can include business purpose, attendees, location, spend authorization, accounting information, project and task allocation, or other required details.
4. Resolving required actions: Employees are notified when action is required. Corporate card notifications can group expenses by required action, such as providing missing receipts or additional information, or reviewing expenses that are ready for submission. Employees can provide supported missing information through email or use Oracle Expenses when additional interaction is required.
5. Expense validation and policy inquiries: Expenses Agent validates the expense against applicable requirements and policies. Applicable Entertainment and Miscellaneous expenses can also be evaluated against configured monthly and yearly spending limits. Employees can ask natural language policy questions, for example, What is my daily dinner limit in Chicago?, and receive immediate, cited answers.
6. Expense report creation: Eligible expenses are grouped into expense reports. Employees can apply available cash advances when submitting expense reports. Expenses Agent can also apply cash advances as part of configured email-based expense completion.
7. Touchless submission: Compliant expense reports are automatically submitted on a scheduled cadence, minimizing or eliminating the need for employees to open Oracle Expenses. Employees interact with the application only when Expenses Agent can’t fully resolve an expense automatically.

Benefits

Implementing Expenses Agent provides measurable operational improvements across several key areas:

• Reduced administrative effort: Eliminates repetitive manual data entry for employees and finance teams by automatically creating and completing expense items.
• Improved employee experience: Employees spend less time creating, completing, and managing expenses because Expenses Agent automates many routine activities and identifies when employee action is required.
• Improved data accuracy: Uses AI to extract transaction details and capture required information, reducing manual entry errors.
• Faster processing cycles: Accelerates expense submission through continuous receipt processing and optional automatic submission.
• Improved policy compliance: Helps collect required information and apply configured expense requirements and spending controls before expense reports are submitted.