Emburse unveils AI tool to tighten expense controls

Emburse has launched Emburse Assurance, an AI-driven expense compliance product that checks claims before submission and assigns risk scores after submission.

The product complements Emburse's existing expense and spend management software. It aims to reduce errors and missing information as employees create expense claims, while adding post-submission checks that flag potential fraud, waste, and abuse for review.

Expense compliance typically depends on approvers and auditors spotting issues after a claim is submitted. That often triggers repeated back-and-forth when receipts are incomplete or details are missing, slowing reimbursements and adding manual work for finance teams.

High-volume spend groups such as Sales and Marketing can feel these delays most. Large numbers of claims increase the workload for approvers and create queues for finance teams. Travellers may also face delayed reimbursements when corrections are needed or policies are unclear.

Pre-submission checks

Emburse Assurance runs automated checks on receipts before employees submit an expense. It analyses receipt details and flags issues such as non-itemised receipts, missing tax details, or missing payment information, then prompts employees to fix them while filing the claim.

Emburse says this reduces "audit noise" by cutting the volume of routine issues reaching managers and finance teams, shifting auditing from a reactive process to earlier intervention in the workflow.

"Employee expenses generate an enormous amount of clerical noise," said Paul Nagy, Chief Product Officer at Emburse. "The constant back-and-forth between employees and approvers doesn't just waste time and money; it creates blind spots for finance that allow real risk and fraud to slip through. Emburse Assurance changes that equation by bringing intelligence earlier on in the process, before expenses are even submitted. We're not simply automating audits after the fact-we're intelligently guiding employees in real-time, removing unnecessary friction, and giving organizations clearer spend signals across every transaction type and business size."

Post-submission risk

After submission, Emburse Assurance analyses patterns across transactions, receipts, and expense reports. It assigns an overall risk score to each expense, which organisations can use to prioritise items for human review.

Post-submission checks include detection of duplicate expenses, altered or AI-generated receipts, and unusually high spend in a given context. The system also scans foreign-language receipts for items that breach policy and can translate receipts from any language into 32 supported languages, according to Emburse.

Organisations can choose which checks run before submission and which run after submission. Emburse says the product covers both corporate card transactions and reimbursement claims, unlike tools that focus checks mainly on card-linked spending.

Analytics and rollout

Emburse Assurance includes analytics for finance teams. Reports track the volume of pre-submission flags and estimate time saved from reduced rework. They also aim to quantify risk identified through automated checks and highlight policy rules that employees frequently breach.

Emburse says early adopters gave the pre-submission checks more than 90% positive feedback. The company worked with customers across market segments to validate the product experience and commercial model.

Emburse Assurance is available as an add-on for Emburse Expense Enterprise. Emburse says it will become available for Emburse Professional, Emburse Spend, and Emburse Captio from March 31, 2026.