USE CASE
Expense and Receipt Approval
Expense receipts and invoices arrive through different channels. Finance looks up purpose, amount, applicable policy, and approver.
In brief. This use case consists of assessing how to: read receipts, find missing fields, check spending rules, route approval, and prepare posting.
How it works today
Expense receipts and invoices arrive through different channels. Finance looks up purpose, amount, applicable policy, and approver.
Where time is lost
An incomplete receipt travels among employee, manager, and finance before reaching the right person.
What can be automated
Read receipts, find missing fields, check spending rules, route approval, and prepare posting.
How a workflow could work
A practical flow takes inputs from the relevant sources, checks them against agreed rules, performs routine actions, and sends uncertain cases to a person.
What still needs a person
The owner approves or rejects out-of-policy expenses and reviews uncertain cases.
Systems that may be involved
Form, repository, expense policy, approvals, and ERP.
When it is worth assessing
When the same policy applies to many receipts across different approvers.
What not to assume
A policy must be defined and current before its checks can be automated.
How Smartservices approaches it
We map the existing process, verify data and system access, define controls and a human review point, then scope an integration or automation around the actual workflow.
Questions to ask before starting
Can this work with our current systems?
It depends on available APIs, exports, permissions, and data quality. We check those constraints before choosing an integration.
Will people still review exceptions?
The owner approves or rejects out-of-policy expenses and reviews uncertain cases.
What is needed for an initial assessment?
A sample of the current inputs, the steps people perform, the systems involved, and the most common exceptions.