Finance playbook · AI Employee: Fin

Reimbursement Intake

Reimbursements paid within one payroll cycle

Install this playbookBack to marketplace
The problem

Reimbursement intake is where employees give up on their own money. Fill out the expense report, attach the receipts, wait a week, get bounced back because one receipt was blurry, refile, wait another week, get bounced because the cost center guess was wrong. By the third bounce, the employee wonders if the $47 lunch is worth the effort. Finance gets the same three questions ten times a day. Everyone loses.

At a glance
Trigger
Chat + form
Approvals
Manager approval
What it does
Writes to your systems
Systems
Expensify · Payroll
How it feels in production

An hour-by-hour walkthrough.

Priya sends a receipt via Slack DM to Fin: photo of a $73 dinner from the Berlin sales trip. Fin OCRs the receipt (vendor, date, amount, currency, line items), classifies as meal-per-diem expense, cross-references Priya's travel record (approved Berlin trip 2026-08-15 to 08-18), and drafts the expense line: - Merchant: Restaurant Nobelhart & Schmutzig - Date: 2026-08-17 - Amount: €73.00 ($79.20 at that day's rate) - Category: Client meal — 2 attendees including customer - Attendees: Priya + customer contact @Acme (from Priya's calendar for that slot) - Cost center: Sales expenses (from Priya's role default) - Policy check: Client meal per-diem €75 → under, no additional justification needed - Business purpose: "Client dinner with Acme Corp during Berlin sales visit" (auto-drafted from context) Fin sends the draft back to Priya in 30 seconds: "Confirm this expense line, or edit anything. On confirm, I'll submit it to your expense report." Priya taps confirm. Expense is filed, routed to Sarah for manager approval, and typically approved same day. For a bounced expense (blurry receipt, over policy limit, missing attendee), Fin flags it back to Priya with the specific fix ("Receipt image is unclear on the amount — can you re-send?" or "This exceeds the €75 per-diem — please add justification"). Bounces from Fin are actionable in seconds instead of a week of email tag.
How it works

Step by step.

  1. 01

    Intake from any channel (Slack, email, mobile)

    Receipt photo via Slack DM, forwarded email, or expense-tool mobile capture. OCR extracts vendor, date, amount, currency, line items. Multi-language, multi-format supported.

    Slack · Email · Mobile capture · OCR
  2. 02

    Classify expense + cross-reference context

    Category (meal, travel, supplies, subscription) from merchant + line items. Cross-reference travel records, calendar for attendees, meeting titles for business purpose. Draft ready in 30 seconds.

    Category classifier · Concur/Expensify context · Calendar
  3. 03

    Draft expense line + policy check

    Populated expense line: merchant, date, amount, category, cost center, business purpose. Policy check: per-diem limits, category eligibility, missing-attendee flag, receipt-image quality.

    Expense policy · Cost center registry · Currency FX
  4. 04

    User confirmation + route to approval

    Draft sent to user for one-tap confirm or edit. On confirm, filed to expense report and routed to manager per approval matrix. Policy violations flagged with the specific fix before submission.

    Slack · Teams · Concur · Expensify · Ramp
  5. 05

    Manager approval + bounce-back handling

    Manager approves in one click with full context. Bounces come back to Fin with reason; Fin translates to actionable user request. Approved expenses to reimbursement queue for next payment run.

    Manager approval flow · Reimbursement queue · Bounce handler
Systems and wiring

What you connect to make this run.

Concur · Expensify · Ramp · Brex

read+write

Expense platform is the system of record. Fin writes drafted lines with all fields populated; user confirms; expense filed. Reads back approval status + bounce reasons.

OCR services · Vision AI

read

Receipt OCR at high accuracy for common formats. Falls back to user confirmation on ambiguous fields (poor image, hand-written receipts, unusual formats).

Google Calendar · Outlook

read

Attendee lookup for client-meal expenses. Meeting title provides business-purpose draft. Cross-references travel dates with expense locations.

HRIS · Cost-center registry

read

Employee default cost center from HRIS role. Alternative cost centers for cross-charged expenses (project work, client engagement). Manager approval chain from HRIS.

What changes

Before and after, honestly.

Time from receipt to filed expense
Before
3-14 days
After
Under 2 minutes
Bounce rate on expense submissions
Before
25-45%
After
Under 5%
Employee hours per expense
Before
8-25 minutes
After
30-90 seconds
Finance hours per week on expense questions
Before
15-30 hours
After
3-6 hours (only edge cases)
Related

Playbooks that pair with this one.

Finance

Expense Submission & Approval

Intake is the front end; approval is the back end. Same expense-life-cycle.

Finance

Receipt Match & Policy Compliance

Corporate-card receipt matching is a special case of this intake flow.

Finance

Corporate Card Issuance

Corporate cards feed expenses directly; intake for out-of-pocket + card mismatch cases.

Frequently asked

Answers about this playbook.

What about foreign-currency receipts?

OCR extracts native currency. Fin converts to base currency using the transaction-date FX rate from Xe / OpenExchange. Both amounts shown on the expense line for auditor visibility.

How does it handle receipts I've already lost?

Missing-receipt affidavit flow. Fin drafts the affidavit with the transaction detail (from card statement or user input), routes for manager approval (under policy limit) or CFO approval (over limit).

Can it handle receipts in multiple languages?

Yes — OCR + translation for common languages. Original receipt preserved; translation stored beside it for auditor + reviewer visibility. Non-Latin scripts supported.

What if the category guess is wrong?

User edits during the confirm step. Fin learns from the correction — repeated corrections adjust the classifier for that user's expense patterns.

How does it work with corporate cards vs. out-of-pocket?

Corporate cards auto-match against card charges (see receipt-match-and-policy-compliance playbook). Out-of-pocket flows through reimbursement queue. Card + receipt not-matched flags to the user for reconciliation.

See it run on your data.

Free plan, no credit card. Connect the systems this playbook needs and run it against a past event first.

Book a demoMore Finance playbooks