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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-04-03
Steps: Set Up Expense Protect

Steps: Set Up Expense Protect

You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature based on your organization's subscription service agreement. Your organization is either on the Main Service Agreement (MSA) or the Universal Main Service Agreement (UMSA). To determine your organization's subscription service agreement:
  1. Select your profile avatar on Workday Community.
  2. Select
    Profile
    .
  3. On your profile page, select your organization's name, which is beneath your name and next to your job title.
  4. View your
    Subscription Service Agreement
     value.
If the value is:
  • UMSA
    , the feature is automatically available. You can skip the
    Enable Innovation Services Feature and AI Data Contributions for MSA Customers
     step. For more information on Machine Learning data contributions, see Concept: Workday AI for Universal Main Subscription Agreement Customers.
  • MSA
    , you must enable this feature through Innovation Services using the
    Enable Innovation Services Feature and AI Data Contributions for MSA Customers
    step.
Note: UMSA customers don't have Innovation Services tasks and reports in their tenants as these are for MSA customers only. UMSA customers can ignore all information regarding Innovation Services.
You can use Expense Protect to quickly and more efficiently surface unusual expense reports that need further review. Expense Protect enables you to leverage machine learning and streamline the expense report review process to speed up reimbursement times.
Expense Protect requires a minimum of 2 to 4 weeks to build and train the machine learning service for your tenant before availability. To check Expense Protect availability, values populate in the
Risk Insights
 and
Risk Level
 columns of the
Expense Report Work Area
.
Workday recommends testing only in preview and production tenants. Workday doesn't support Expense Protect in implementation or sandbox tenants.
  1. You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.
    When you select a country to exclude from data collection, Expense Protect isn't available for expense reports of payees in that country. This can also result in an insufficient number of required expense reports.
    Workday displays a status of
    Available
    when you can use Expense Protect.
    Security:
    Manage: Innovation Services
     domain in the Innovation Services functional area.
  2. Access the
    Edit Tenant Setup - Financials
     task.
    Under
    Expenses Options
    , select the
    Enable Expense Protect for Expense Reports
     check box
    Select the region in which Workday hosts data used for improvement and personalization of machine learning and analytics functionality.
    Security:
    Set Up: Tenant Setup - Machine Learning
     in the System functional area.
    Workday requires a minimum of 10,000 submitted expense report lines in your tenant to enable Expense Protect.
  3. Edit Domain Security Policies .
    Grant security groups permissions to the
    Set Up: Expense Protect
     domain in the Expenses functional area.
  4. Hide or require the
    Risk Level
     and
    Risk Insights
     columns in the:
    • Grid View.
    • Line Details.
    • Expense Report Work Area
      .
    Once you opt in to Expense Protect and machine learning is ready in your tenant, Workday displays the
    Risk Insights
     and
    Risk Level
     columns in the
    Expense Report Work Area
     even if you haven't enabled the
    Set Up: Expense Protect
     domain.
  5. Access the
    Maintain Expense Risk Level Configuration
     task.
    Select risk score values for these risk levels:
    • Low
    • Medium
    • High
  6. (Optional) Access the
    Generate Risk Scores for Expenses
     task.
    You can queue up in-progress expense reports for assessment, risk scoring, and a data refresh after opting into Expense Protect. Example: You opt in to Expense Protect and want to view
    Risk Level
     and
    Risk Insight
     on historical expense reports. You access this task so that Expense Protect can assess historical expense report lines.
    Security:
    Set Up: Expense Protect
     domain in the Expenses functional area.
  7. (Optional) Add the
    Wait for Expense Protect Inference
     service step to the Expense Report Event business process.
    You can route expense reports based on risk score.
When Expense Protect identifies the risk level on an expense report, you can review, and approve or send back the anomalous expenses.
Access the
Expense Report Work Area
 report to view risk insights and risk levels for expense reports. You need to have access to the
Process: Expense Report Work Area
 domain to access the
Expense Report Work Area.
Workday provides 1 of these Workday configured insights:
  • Amount Anomaly
  • Duplicate Expense
  • Incorrect Expense Item
You can also use these report fields based on the Expense Report Line business object to create custom reports:
  • Duplicate Expense from Expense Protect
  • Risk Score
  • Risk Score for Amount Anomaly
  • Risk Score for Duplicate Expense
  • Risk Score for Incorrect Expense Item
  • Suggested Expense Item