Why automate expense report control in 2026?

Manual expense report control is costly, slow, and error-prone. In 2026, companies that haven't automated this process lose an average of 15% of their T&E budget to undetected anomalies ^[1].

The limits of manual control

• Excessive time: a controller processes 5 to 10 expense reports per hour on average ^[2]
• High error rate: up to 20% of anomalies go unnoticed ^[3]
• Hidden cost: processing a single expense report can exceed €25 ^[4]

AI as a solution

Artificial intelligence enables 100% real-time expense report analysis, detecting anomalies the human eye cannot see: cross-employee duplicates, AI-generated receipts, out-of-policy expenses.

Benefits of automated control

By entrusting expense report auditing to a specialized AI like EVA, companies see tangible improvements:

• Exhaustive detection: every expense report is analyzed, versus partial sampling in manual control
• Significant fraud reduction: real-time identification of duplicates, fake receipts, and inconsistent amounts
• Time savings for controllers: teams focus on genuinely suspicious cases rather than systematic verification
• Enhanced compliance: consistent application of expense policies across the entire organization

Automated control doesn't replace human judgment—it complements it by eliminating repetitive tasks and ensuring no anomaly slips through the cracks.

Sources

^[1] GBTA Foundation, Managing Travel & Expense Costs, 2024

^[2] Aberdeen Group, Best Practices in Expense Management, 2023

^[3] ACFE, Report to the Nations, 2024

^[4] GBTA Foundation, The True Cost of Processing an Expense Report, 2023