Concept: Expense Protect

Expense Protect uses risk scores as the basis for a risk evaluation. These values lie between 0-100. These scores help identify anomalous expense report lines in expense reports that aren’t in

Draft

status. When you submit an expense report, Expense Protect assigns a risk score to each expense report line. After evaluating all scores, it assigns the highest risk score to the expense report level.

The risk score indicates how anomalous the expense report is relative to all other expense reports in your organization. Example: The predicted amount for air travel to India is 2,420 USD. An employee submits an expense report for 9,782 USD. Expense Protect detects a deviation in the expense report compared to 95% of similar expense reports in your organization. Expense Protect then assigns a risk score of 95 to the expense report.

To identify anomalous expense reports, you can build custom reports using these report fields on the Expense Report Line business object:

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

Expense Protect uses these models:

Amount Anomaly: Predicts an expected amount for a given expense item, compares the expected amount with the data on the expense report, and returns a risk score that reflects the difference between the input amount and the predicted amount.
Duplicate Expense: Detects duplicate nonitemized expenses against paid and in progress expenses. The machine learning looks back at 6 months worth of expenses (from the Expense Report Date) in your tenant to detect duplicate expenses. It can take 2-3 days for Workday to consider a paid expense report as a duplicate one. Expense Protect evaluates paid expenses with these matching values:
Amount
Currency
Expense Item
Expense Date
Payee
Expense Protect considers an expense a duplicate if either:
1 of the expenses is an out of pocket expense and the other expense has a matching credit card transaction.
Both expenses are out of pocket expenses.
Incorrect Expense Items: Compares the probability of the expense item that you select with the probability of alternatives based on the data in the report. Expense Protect returns a risk score that reflects the likelihood that the expense item should change.

Risk levels and insights help you identify discrepancies, such as expenses that:

Aren’t compliant with your expense policy based on your tenant's historical data.
Exceed defined spend thresholds based on your tenant's historical data.

You can configure a display setting for risk levels to help guide your experience based on risk score and the risk threshold for your organization. You can define expense risk levels using risk scores on the

Maintain Expense Risk Level Configuration

task. Workday provides default risk levels and ranges for each model.

Approvers and reviewers can view the expense data that Expense Protect evaluates in these columns on the

Expense Report Work Area

report:

Risk Insights
Risk Level

This information also displays in the expense line details received in My Tasks.

In the

Risk Insights

column, Workday displays 1 or more of these categories for expenses with medium and high risk levels:

Amount Anomaly
Duplicate Expense
Incorrect Expense Item

For incorrect expense items, a recommended expense item displays on the expense line detail in the

Suggested Expense Item

field.

Workday displays a

Pending

risk level when an error occurs while generating a risk score. You can manually regenerate a risk score using the

Generate Risk Score for Expenses

task.