Auto-Itemization is a powerful tool that utilizes machine learning and AI to automatically map line items from a receipt to the appropriate expense policy. The clean design and advanced automation of this feature have helped our sales team to significantly increase our software's adoption.
On my second day, I was tasked with designing Auto-Itemization, which turned out to be the company's biggest feature for 2021. I owned the entire design process, from research and ideation to the final UI. I designed both the end user and admin experience for both mobile and web.
8 weeks
Closing the books every month is a critical process for finance teams, and it's essential that every dollar spent is properly accounted for. However, this can be a challenging task when transactions involve multiple expense policies, as it requires finance teams to manually review each transaction to ensure accurate allocation of expenses.
Consider this scenario: you're on a business trip and order tacos and a margarita to your hotel room. While the tacos are covered under the meals policy, the alcohol is not. Now, when you check out, all these items are on a single receipt.
This often results in finance teams being forced to manually check every single receipt that has been uploaded into the expense management system.
Of our users want to itemize to avoid expense rejection
Of our users want to itemize their expenses to avoid delays on reimbursements
We have two types of users using this feature. The end-user (employee) and the finance manager.
Elizabeth has to travel a couple times every month to visit clients. Which is why she has to submit expenses on a regular basis. She often has both expenses that are covered under company policy and personal expenses included in the same receipt.
She wants to spend the least amount of time possible doing expense reports.
Providing context to finance managers about her expenses, and figuring out what policies apply to each expense. Plus, waiting for a long time to get reimbursed.
Auto-Itemization needs to handle a range of scenarios, from simple expense claims like team dinners where meals and alcohol are charged separately, to more complex cases like business travel where receipts need to be split across different projects and clients, while also accommodating personal expenses. All of this must be done quickly and easily, with the user able to complete the itemization in less than 2 minutes.
The feature should be highly customizable and seamless, to provide a hassle-free experience for the user.
We can automatically categorize line items on a receipt by extracting the necessary information and matching it with the appropriate policies. For example, a receipt for a meal could potentially fall under different policies, such as "Meals for Myself", "Per Diem", or "Team Dinner". However, determining the correct policy can be challenging. To tackle this issue, we take into account several factors, including the merchant name, location, total amount, participants, and item names.
To make the tool more user-friendly and customizable, I created a simple interface where items are grouped by policy and date. This enables bulk actions, such as moving all items from a specific day to a particular policy, project, or client for billing purposes.
Once a receipt is scanned, each line item is automatically categorized under the right expense policy within seconds.
These line items are then grouped by policy and date, providing users with a clear and easily navigable view of all their expenses.
To account for potential inaccuracies in scanning, users have the option to modify any item within the tool. They can move the item to a new policy, or edit details such as the title, total amount, and description.
While developing Auto-Itemization, I faced a significant challenge when receipts failed to scan accurately due to the technology being only 65% reliable at that time. To tackle this issue, I created an innovative flow that allowed for assisted manual itemization.
The flow included a 'speed dial' half-sheet, enabling users to select the item type on their receipt, such as 'meals' or 'gas,' which automatically populates the corresponding policy. Additionally, I integrated the expense limit into the same interface, eliminating the need for users to switch between screens. Even with the possibility of technological glitches, manually itemizing the bill remains a straightforward task to complete.
In the past, finance teams had to manually review every single receipt that was uploaded into the expense management system. This resulted in a lot of back and forth communication with the cardholder to get additional information, which was time-consuming and frustrating for everyone involved. This feature increases efficiency for finance admins by removing the need to review transactions. Unless something has been flagged.
I added an option for admins to itemize the employee's receipt themselves, if necessary. This provides an additional layer of flexibility and ease of use for both employees and finance admins.
In order to collect some quantitative and qualitative feedback we first launched this feature for TripActions employees and to 5 selected companies, so that we could iterate for a general release the following month.
Itemization is proving to be a very useful and effective tool both for employees who need to take a business trip and for companies that need to reconcile their expenses. Not only have we gotten coverage in the press but the feedback we have received from the companies that are using this tool has been fantastic.
