AI USE CASE
Expense Receipt OCR and Policy Checker
Automatically reads expense receipts and flags policy violations for finance teams at small organisations.
What it is
This use case applies OCR and rule-based AI to extract key fields from expense receipts (vendor, amount, date, category) and cross-check them against the company's expense policy in real time. Finance leads at 20–200-person companies typically reclaim 1–2 days per month previously spent on expense auditing, while improving policy compliance rates significantly.
Data you need
Digital or scanned expense receipts and a documented expense policy with clear rules and spending caps.
Required systems
- accounting
- erp
Why it works
- Codify the full expense policy in writing before configuration, including all caps, forbidden categories, and exceptions.
- Choose a vendor with a mobile capture app so employees submit receipts at point of purchase, maximising image quality.
- Run a 2-week parallel test alongside the existing manual process before switching over, to calibrate flagging rules.
- Integrate directly with the accounting system so approved expenses flow through without re-entry.
How this goes wrong
- Expense policy is undocumented or inconsistent, so the checker flags the wrong items and loses manager trust immediately.
- Employees photograph receipts poorly (blurry, partial) and OCR accuracy drops, creating more manual work than before.
- Edge-case categories (client gifts, international per diems) are not configured, leading to false positives that staff learn to ignore.
- The tool is adopted for receipts only but expenses still require manual ERP entry, delivering only partial time savings.
When NOT to do this
Don't deploy this when the company has fewer than 15 employees submitting occasional expenses, the setup cost and ongoing configuration effort outweigh the manual time saved.
Example vendors
This page describes an idea. It gives no budget or timeline: those depend on your company. The free diagnostic tells you which ideas fit your situation.