Expense management and accounts payable automation provider Emburse has launched a new expense auditing solution that combines artificial intelligence and machine learning with human auditors to streamline the auditing process while ensuring accuracy, according to the company. 

Dubbed Emburse Audit, the service is available now for users of Emburse’s Certify, Chrome River and Nexonia expense management platforms at an additional fee—either per report or added to the monthly per-user subscription price, depending on the customer’s pricing model, according to an Emburse spokesperson.

The system initially analyzes expenses against pre-defined criteria to assess the probability of compliance with a corporation’s reimbursement policies. Transactions with a higher probability of error or noncompliance are sent to Emburse’s human auditors for closer review and subsequently can be returned for correction or forwarded along the company’s approval chain, Emburse said. 

The increase in work-from-home and more decentralized corporate spending patterns stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic have increased the risk of expense policy violations and fraud, data show. The absence of internal controls further increases that risk, according to a 2020 report by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, which found that a lack of such controls contributes to nearly one-third of all corporate expense fraud attempts.