AI-powered tool that automates ride-sharing expenses with a 99.52% success rate. Launched in April 2022, this feature automatically created and submitted 1,464 expenses from forwarded email receipts during its one-month testing phase. This innovation was recognized as the best user experience design by FastCompany in 2023
Led the user experience design for Auto-submit, which also included a complete redesign of our receipt import process. As the sole designer on this project, I handled ideation, design, team alignment, and usability testing.
This project involved close collaboration between a project manager, 4 software engineers, and design leadership over the course of two weeks.
2 weeks
Users often had to take screenshots of email receipts to create expense claims because the forwarding email address was hard to find. Even when they did find it, the entire process was time-consuming.
A customer representative would receive the email and create the expense, often without the necessary context and details, leading to back-and-forth communication.
Of our users complained about the lack of ability to forward an email receipt.
Of our users requested a way to forward email receipts.
My first step was to audit the current experience. To import a receipt, users had to tap 'attach receipt,' which opened the camera view. I quickly identified there were no instructions on how to forward an email receipt or which address to use.
Unnecessary option, since users without a receipt wouldn't tap 'Submit receipt’
Unnecessary and illegibility choice between single and multiple photo capture.
Importing a receipt was limited to album photos.
I improved the receipt import experience to simplify email forwarding and make options like PDF uploads and photo library more accessible and discoverable. But most importantly, we want people to easily link their email accounts so that when they forward a receipt, we can accurately match their employee account with the appropriate policies.
I created a segmented control that allows users to quickly view and switch between all receipt import options, making it easy to choose the most convenient one.
Our smart technology further reduces manual work by extracting information from receipts, creating new transactions, and automatically populating the necessary expense details. This eliminates manual data entry, allowing users to submit their expenses with a single click.
AI analyzes the email receipt and employee account to find the most accurate match, auto-populating all transaction fields and eliminating manual data entry.
Although the likelihood of attaching a receipt to the wrong transaction is around 1.4% of the time, I provided a solution for such cases. Users can manually move a receipt to the correct transaction and automatically delete the incorrect one.
This feature not only allows users to move a receipt to the correct transaction but also serves as a performance metric. If many receipts require re-assignment, it signals the need for improvements to enhance the feature's accuracy.
Although extracting information from the receipt and auto-populating fields has greatly improved the experience, we believe there’s room for further optimization. When an email receipt is forwarded and all required information is filled, the expense should be automatically submitted without any extra action. This would eliminate both manual data entry and the need for manual submission.
With this feature, your ride-sharing expenses area automatically submitted as soon as you exit the car, without needing to open the app.
To test this idea gradually, we integrated with Lyft. This system automatically forwards trip receipts to our expense management platform (Navan), enabling the automatic submission of ride-sharing transactions for business travel.
Out of 1,464 auto-submit transactions, only 7 required edits, showing that most transactions were submitted accurately. This result exceeded expectations, validating the integration's success and paving the way to scale this feature across all expense types.
People loved this feature, as reflected in our NPS comments. ❤️
