Automatic population of expense field data

Payhawk helps with expense automation by reducing the manual work when reviewing, confirming the details, or paying company expenses.

Payhawk utilizes optical character recognition (OCR) technology reading more than 65 languages including Cyrillic, an advanced AI data extraction algorithm, and multiple machine learning (ML) algorithms, to name a few, to leverage the data and automatically suggest as many expense fields as possible.

Optical character recognition or reader (OCR) is the electronic conversion of images of typed or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document or a photo of a document. Payhawk uses OCR for images and scanned documents that were taken while using the mobile application. Once Payhawk detects the text from the image, the system continues with the data extraction process, figuring out the total amount, the invoice number, and so on.

As part of its expense management solution, Payhawk has developed an AI-powered data extraction algorithm, which automatically extracts the relevant information from uploaded invoices and receipts. The avoidance of manual data input reduces errors in accounting data and increases the productivity of Finance teams.

From expense and payment documents, the data extraction tool takes out the following expense information:

For more information on the Payhawk OCR implementation, see the Smart data extraction made simple with OCR technology blog post by Trish Toovey.

Expense categorization contains not only the information from the document, but also other fields such as Category (G/L code), custom fields (Project, Cost center, and so on), and VAT code.
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As the value of those fields cannot be determined based on the information in the document, Payhawk applies different strategies to suggest the correct value for each of those fields.

The suggestion strategies are part of the settings Payhawk administrators define for each custom expense field or the Category built-in expense field. These settings are located in the Expense fields > Custom fields > [Selected custom field] > Settings or Expense fields > Built-in fields > Categories > Settings tab respectively.

If Suggestions is set to None, then the expense field will remain blank and won't be automatically populated.

If Suggestions is set to One default value, you need to define that default value so that it will be automatically filled in the expense field for each expense. This is useful if you have a custom field that has one value for more than 90% of the expenses and the Finance team rarely changes it on the review step.

If Suggestions is set to Payhawk AI, the expense field will be automatically populated based on the historical data the Payhawk system has gathered for your account. The advanced ML model considers the employee, supplier, historical field values, merchant category (in the case of card transactions), and other parameters to decide on each expense and each categorization field.
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The Payhawk AI option is set by default to all custom fields and is appropriate for any business case in which automation is needed. This option is especially powerful for fields where you don't have strict rules.

If Suggestions is set to Supplier, then, the expense field suggestion will be driven by the supplier selected for the expense. This is useful for custom fields and categories when they are strictly driven by the supplier - for example, if the supplier is Uber, the category is Taxi allowance, if the supplier is Facebook Ads, the category is Marketing Ads, and more.

Once you select that the suggestion strategy for a field is Supplier, you will be able to pick a field value for each of your suppliers.

The expense field will be displayed in the Expense categorization tab for all suppliers. Then, you can go to Suppliers, select a specific supplier, go to the Expense categorization tab, and set a value for that expense field. As a result, all expenses associated with that supplier will display the configured value for the defined field under the Categorization section.

By selecting a value from the Default value for all suppliers list, you can specify the expense field value in case there is no value set for a supplier. To display a default value if there is no supplier value, you can select it from here - for example, if the Supplier location custom expense field is not pre-selected, then always select Germany as a default value.

If Suggestions is set to Employee/Team, you'll be able to set a default value for that expense field for all employees and teams. This is useful for fields that are strictly driven by the employee or the team - for example, the Cost center, Department, or Location custom expense fields.

Once you select the Team/Employee option as the suggestion strategy for a field, you will be able to pick a field value for each of your teams and employees in the platform.

The expense field will be displayed in the Expense categorization tab for all employees and teams. Then, you can go to the Employees app, select a specific employee or team, go to the Expense categorization tab of the employee or team, and set a value for the expense field for that specific employee or team.

By selecting a value from the Default value for all teams/ employees list, you can specify the expense field value in case there is no value set for that employee and their teams - for example, if there is no pre-selected value for the employee, always select Contractors expenses for the Cost Center custom expense field.

The tax rate is significant for the tax reclaim process and the way you categorize your expenses. Payhawk supports the following strategies for the Tax rate built-in expense field: