Your Expense Reports Could Be Writing Themselves. Here's How

There’s no way around it, so we’re just going to come out and say it: Expense reports are a pain. That’s exactly why we work so hard to make expense reporting simple, fast, and accurate for businesses around the world.

Recently, though, new advancements in technology might mean that you’ll never have to fill out an expense report again. That may sound like a bold claim, but in a recent partnership with The New York Times, we explain how that’s possible – and how the technology that makes it possible is already here.

Can AI release us from the nightmare of expense reports?

Read this article in The New York Times to see how, in the coming year, expense reports will be writing themselves.

Read the full story

Artificial intelligence is changing the game for all kinds of technologies at a rapid pace. And machine learning is the branch of AI that enables computers and applications to “learn” and improve from experience. When applied to expense management, machine learning allows AI to accurately evaluate reports by observing patterns in what human reviewers approve or reject over time.

Already AI is making expense reports less of a burden than ever. For the article, the Times interviewed several SAP Concur executives, employees, and customers, then outlined several benefits that businesses have seen from letting AI complete their expense reports, including:

1. Intuitive tools that blend into the background
   When new and innovative tools become commonplace, they become an invisible part of your day, helping to complete tasks behind the scenes. More automation helps to reduce user error due to manual entry by up to 66 percent, improving the accuracy, compliance, and speed of expense reporting.

1. More time for teams to innovate
   Related to the point above, with fewer approvals and less daily manual effort, businesses see better results. Employees can use the time they free up to focus on higher-value, more strategic initiatives. For example, Cardinal Health was able to save up to 10,000 hours per month by automating its expense reports in 2011.

1. Complementary roles for humans and machines
   Modern corporate policies that take advantage of these technologies allow existing employees to add more value to the business in other areas. As a result, rather than contributing to unemployment, artificial intelligence helps to create new efficiencies that didn’t exist previously.

To discover the full scope of innovations that are here already – and many that are still yet to come – read the full NYT article here.