AppZen Product and Services Descriptions

AppZen Product and Services Descriptions

• AppZen Autonomous AP
  • Autonomous AP Sandbox - Add-on
• AppZen Expense Audit
  • • Team Intelligence - Add-on
    • Expense Audit Sandbox - Add-on
• AppZen AppStore
  • Base Models
  • Standard Apps
  • Premium Apps
  • Custom Models
• AppZen Expense Audit Bundles
• AppZen Spend Audit
• AppZen Professional Services
• AppZen Support

AppZen Autonomous AP

AppZen Autonomous AP is an AI-first application that reads invoices, understands their content, context, and meaning, enforces company spend policies, automates PO matching, predict GL and cost centers, audits and verifies vendor before payment, routes invoice for workflow approval, and posts processed invoices in the ERP systems for payment.
AppZen Autonomous AP delivers autonomous processing for all invoices sent to your AP inbox, increasing the speed and accuracy of processing while lowering costs. Autonomous AP automates the processing of non-digital invoices (pdf and standard images) from receipt (inbox) to posting to the customer’s ERP systems.
Upon receipt, invoice data is extracted and validated, PO and accounting policies are applied, invoices are checked for duplicates, and exceptions are reviewed and corrected by accounts payable staff before being posted to the target (ERP) system. AppZen Autonomous AP’s ZenLearn feature provides the ability for AI to learn quickly and automatically adjust its predictions, based on just 2-3 data samples of user feedback. This helps maximize autonomous processing for similar invoices in the future.
AppZen Autonomous AP accurately assigns cost centers and account codes specific to your accounting policy and chart of accounts. AppZen Autonomous AP enforces enterprise spend and PO policies, automates GL accounting, PO matching, and exception handling, audits invoices for duplicates, and performs vendor verification checks against sanctioned entity lists. AppZen Autonomous AP flags invoices and spending that skirt your policies and should have POs.
AppZen Autonomous AP also provides a native approval workflow and notifications, that enable you to send the right invoice to the right approver at the right time. Autonomous AP speeds up invoice processing, enabling AP teams to take advantage of early payments and enhance supplier relationships.
AppZen Autonomous AP audit for duplicates across all of your invoices across your AP Inbox, Supplier Portals, and P2P systems, prior to payment. AppZen Autonomous AP integrates seamlessly with major ERPs, making it easier to leverage and extend existing systems.
AppZen Autonomous AP provides AP managers with operations, risk, and spend dashboards to track and optimize the AP process.

Autonomous AP Sandbox Add-on

Sandbox provides a production-quality environment for Customers to test new configurations and changes before they are applied to the production environment. It also provides an area where Customers can train new users. Sandbox can be configured to connect to the Customer’s non-production system. Sandbox’s code version will be the same as that of production. Data and configurations cannot be copied over between sandbox and production. Its license is limited to 10% of the annual production capacity without incurring additional transaction fees.

AppZen Expense Audit

AppZen Expense Audit integrates with a customer’s expense management system to perform a real-time audit of every line item in their expense reports. It can cross-reference expense reports with receipts and thousands of online sources and extracts key information from a receipt to catch duplicates, out-of-policy spend, incorrect amounts, suspicious merchants or attendees, and excessive spend. Expense Audit delivers 17 AppZen base audit models that cover the most common expense audit scenarios.

Integral to AppZen Expense Audit is Mastermind, an AI-first platform and the foundation of AppZen’s Expense Audit, Autonomous AP, and Spend Audit applications. Through Mastermind, you can customize and configure new AI models and extend base audit models.

Expense Audit also provides access to Analytics – dynamic, AI-driven spend insights on AppZen-audited spend data. It offers a view of spend, risk, and risk-management operational performance, with standard and customizable charts, dashboards, and metrics. And it contains standard benchmarks for measuring these analytics against industry peers, allowing customers to identify areas of excellence and opportunity.

Single sign-on for Expense Audit is a standards-based user authentication solution that integrates with a Customer’s identity provider application through SAML, OpenID Connect, or OAuth. It improves the login experience for users and allows administrators to easily provide or revoke access to users through their identity provider application of choice. Single sign-on supports service provider authentication flow.

Also included in Premium and Enterprise Editions is Bulk Data Export for Expense Audit, which supports the ability to create scheduled expense line level detail extracts that can be posted to a customer’s preferred SFTP destination. The extracted details per line include AI model metadata which customers can use to run analytics on their preferred platform.

Team Intelligence

Team Intelligence (available as an add-on or included in the Enterprise edition) enables finance leaders to make better decisions by providing them with a single view of the team spend and compliance information, regardless of geographical location or currency. It provides a single-pane dashboard containing different spend metrics and drill-down capabilities that highlight spend metrics for each team, as well as individual staff members across disparate geographical locations and currencies. This enables front-line team managers to see names, dates, and report IDs associated with high-risk spend. Team Intelligence helps managers spot top spenders through a grading system that quantifies performance.

Enabling finance and audit teams to provide front-line managers with greater awareness of team spend helps them reduce outlier patterns, increase compliance, and pay employees faster. Team Intelligence sends team managers a monthly email with a summary of team members who have the highest spend, and prompts them to proactively check team and staff members spend on a regular basis. It provides a score identifying the riskiest direct reports and how they compare to each other so managers can see patterns they would not see when reviewing each transaction.

This approach saves auditors’ time by highlighting non-compliant spend faster and significantly increases the productivity of front-line team managers by eliminating the need for manager approval of compliant spend and the potential for blindly approving non-compliant transactions within individual expense reports.

Expense Audit Sandbox Add-on

Sandbox provides a production-quality environment for Customers to test new configurations and changes before they are applied to the production environment. It also provides an area where Customers can train new users. Sandbox can be configured to connect to the Customer’s non-production expense automation system. Sandbox’s code version will be the same as that of production. Data and configurations cannot be copied over between the sandbox and production. Its license is limited to 10% of the annual production capacity without incurring additional transaction fees.

AppZen AppStore

The AppZen AppStore is the world’s first Finance AI-specific AppStore. One of the main benefits of the AppZen approach to autonomous finance operations is the ability to customize the solution to the unique needs of each organization. If you can think of a policy, we can build a custom model to process that policy autonomously. Our customers benefit from the ideas for custom models built that came from the entire AppZen customer base.

Expense Audit Base Models

Expense Audit contains AI models that are the core foundations of the product, called Base Models. Below is the list of Expense Audit Base Models available.

1. Amount Verification: The Amount Verification Base Model ensures that the amount submitted for an expense line is below a specific threshold, broken down by cash (personal credit card or cash currency) and credit (corporate card).
2. Amount Verification by Expense Type: The Amount Verification by Expense Type Base Model checks for specific expense types and ensures that the submitted amount is below a specific threshold, broken down by cash (personal card or cash currency) and credit (corporate card).  
3. Automated Receipt Verification: The Automated Receipt Verification Base Model verifies whether user input data matches the receipt data picked up by AppZen's OCR. 
   • • Validates there is an existing receipt
     • Verifies the amounts match between the user input data and receipt
     • Checks for any tip amount that falls outside a specified variation set in AppZen
     • Matches the date on the receipt against the user input date
     • Reads handwritten digits on receipts (English only)
     • Searches for a total sum of user input amount across receipts that have more than one page
4. Cash Line Validation: The Cash Line Validation Base Model validates the credit card number on the receipt of a Cash (out of pocket) expense line against a Customer-provided list of corporate credit card numbers. If there is a match, AppZen will flag this as high risk since the employee is reimbursing a corporate credit card transaction that is potentially already paid out.
5. Daily Meal Limit: The Daily Meal Limit Base Model detects whether the user's daily meal cost is greater than the threshold set. 
6. Expense Age Check: The Expense Age Check Base Model analyses receipts to determine whether the receipt was submitted beyond the required submission date range.
7. Receipt Itemization Verification Check: The Receipt Itemization Verification Check Base Model reads a hotels or meal receipt to determine whether it is providing itemized details. We strongly recommend enabling this model for AppZen to find unauthorized spend, such as alcohol and room upgrades, that may otherwise be hidden in non-itemized receipts.
8. Duplicates Within Reports: The Duplicates Within Reports Base Model analyzes receipts for the date, amount, and merchants to find duplicate claims within a report.  
9. Duplicates Across Reports: The Duplicates Across Reports Base Model searches across the reports of the employee who submitted the expense, as well as across all other employees' reports to detect any duplicate receipts. The receipt image submitted in the report will appear alongside the receipt image that has been identified as a duplicate of the receipt submitted. In doing so, auditors will be able to cross-reference the information within the two receipt images to verify the duplicate. If no matching receipts are found, the model analyses receipts and user input for parameters such as date, amount, and more to find duplicate claims across reports.
10. Merchant Category Check: This model searches the merchant on the web to verify if the merchant is associated with any questionable activity including adult entertainment, movie theaters, spas, golf, etc. MCC Codes are used (AppZen also looks for MCC codes in Credit Card transactions).
11. Merchant Price Check: This model performs an internet search (e.g. Yelp) to verify the average amount that a meal should cost for an individual, and validate it against the cost and number of people an employee has submitted within their expense report.
12. Unauthorized Expenses: The Unauthorized Expenses model reads receipts to identify expenses that the Customer has identified as unauthorized per their expense policy. Typical examples include tobacco products, alcohol, spa treatments, first-class upgrades, etc. 
13. Weekend Expense Check: The Weekend Expense Check looks at the date on user input and the receipt to validate if a purchase was made on a Saturday or Sunday (or another designated day).
14. Non-Conforming Receipt Check: The Non-Conforming Receipt determines if an employee uploaded a valid receipt. Some examples of non-conforming receipts are handwritten receipts, sticky notes, random photos, and blurry receipts. 
15. Anti-Corruption and Bribery Check: The Anti-Corruption and Bribery Check performs an FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) check, searching against US/Global databases (e.g., Government, FBI most wanted, news sites, etc.) to match attendee names submitted within a receipt for an expensed meal. 
16. Healthcare Professional Check (HCP): The Healthcare Professional Check analyses business attendees to determine if medical professionals are listed. It cross-references the US National Provider Identifier Registry (NPI) to spot expense reports that have a healthcare professional tagged as an attendee.
17. Manager As An Attendee Check: The Manager as Attendee checks if the attendee list on an expense report includes the submitter’s manager. This model requires the synchronization of the Customer employee directory with the AppZen product.

AppZen AppStore - Standard Apps

The Standard Apps listed below are not part of the 17 Base Models. Standard Apps are created from Custom Apps that were built by request of an AppZen customer, then offered to our entire customer base on our AppStore. Check out our website to request more information on the AppStore models and an AppZen representative will contact you with the next steps on the model you are interested in.

1. Fapiao Validation: Flag as high-risk if a fapiao is missing from a CNY receipt, for expense type that requires fapiao and that the customer has not excluded. This model checks for business titles and tax code, vendor name consistency, fapiao format, and official stamps.
2. Advance Booking Check: Ensure compliance with advanced booking policies by flagging air and rail transportation expense lines as a high or medium risk if the booking date is less than a certain time period (for example, 14 days) before the travel date. This model will use the extracted dates from an Airfare or Train receipt and compare it to the transaction date, and flag if there is a difference of fewer than 14 days.
3. Gift Form Check: Flag expense lines for configured expense types if a gift card approval form is not attached to the expense line. This model will flag expense lines for expense type "55541 - Payments to Subjects" as high risk if both an itemized receipt and GWU gift card approval form are not attached to the expense line.
4. Tax Detection: Flag expenses when sales tax is detected on the receipt. This App is relevant for universities and nonprofit institutions that are exempt from sales tax. This model will search for and flag high risk whenever sales tax is located on a receipt, this only applies top-card expense lines that are over $750. This app enables customers to track the amount of tax that is being spent on corporate card transactions. It flags expenses when tax is detected on the receipt. For example US sales tax, VAT, or BTW.
5. Hotel Billing Check: Ensure that hotels correctly bill your organization when required by company policy. This App checks all hotel receipts for a valid company billing entity and flags the expense when the organization name is missing. This model will check the images on any Hotel-related expense and will flag high risk if there is not a customer-specific entity listed on the image.
6. Rental Car Accessories: Customize audit to flag unauthorized car rental expenses such as Budget's Roadside Safety Net (RSN) or Avis's Select n Go Upgrade (SGU) option. This model is an extension of the Unauthorized Expenses model. The model will flag high risk if RSN (Roadside Safety Net) or SGU (Select n Go Upgrade) are detected on a Car Rental receipt.
7. Alcohol Check for Grants: For universities and research institutions, government grants often forbid using funds to purchase alcohol. This App makes it easy to flag alcohol purchases tied to specific grants. AppZen Mastermind AI even recognizes alcohol brands and can differentiate between subtle distinctions like a beer and a root beer float. This model is an extension of the Unauthorized Expenses model. The model will flag high risk if alcohol is detected on the same expense line as a grant expense. Grant expenses are determined by a custom field that gets sent over in the expense report payload.
8. Allowable Alcohol Check: This model Identifies how much of a meal was spent on alcohol, and flags as high risk when the percentage is higher than policy allows. This model enhances the Alcohol Unauthorized Items category and flags High Risk if items identified as alcohol make up more than 30% of the total amount on Meal and Entertainment receipts. It will calculate the percentage of alcohol detected on a receipt and will update the risk message to include the percentage.
9. Attendee Type Check: This model identifies meal and entertainment expense limits for specific business guest attendees and government employees. Flag 100% of meal and entertainment expenses that exceed defined thresholds for each guest type. This module helps organizations stay in compliance with FCPA or the Sunshine Act.
10. Expense Sub-Type Check: The Expense Sub-Type Check App allows corporations to configure custom sub-expense types, set threshold limits, and flag sub-expense types that exceed these threshold values. For example, a manager may allow their team members to buy work-from-home office equipment, such as an office chair, with a limit of $200. This App can configure "office chair" as a sub-expense type of work-from-home supplies and assign the appropriate risk levels based on dollar amounts. This App is an extension of the Amount Verification Expense Type model already included as part of the Autonomous Expense Audit solution.

• • Reduce manual work & enforce company policy
  • Create custom sub-expense types tied to expense line items
  • Apply appropriate threshold limits against the sub-expense type amounts
  • Flag sub-expense type risk as high, medium, or low based on threshold values

12. Missing Document Detection:For life sciences companies, compliance with the Sunshine Act is critical but labor-intensive. AppZen can help identify whether sign-in sheets are attached to expenses that require them. Though the Sunshine act is limited to the US, sign-in sheets are applicable to other countries. This model gives the customer the ability to automate their health care professional compliance check for a custom HCP sign-in sheet and checks if the sheet was submitted in an expense report. This model helps healthcare customers ensure compliance with the HCP Sunshine Act. The Act requires companies to keep records among other things, meals and snacks purchased when entertaining any healthcare professional guests.
13. Keyword Audit: Identify and flag user-defined, high-risk keywords on a wide variety of expense-related fields and sources. For example, receipt images and business purposes. This model is an extension of the Unauthorized Lexicon Flagging model and will flag high risk if a specific set of lexicons are detected and the expense line amount is greater than the respective threshold.

The lexicon model gives a customer the ability to add words or terms that are not out-of-the-box high-risk flags in AppZen, primarily in the unauthorized category.

13. Conflicting Expenses Check: Sometimes employees don’t fully understand all the policy nuances. One such area of confusion is conflicting expenses that should never be claimed on the same expense report. For example, your expense policy may either allow an employee to claim a daily per diem, or itemize and claim individual meal expenses, but not both for the same day. Similarly, employees may either claim car mileage or fuel expenses, but not both. The Conflicting Expenses Check App identifies expense reports with conflicting expenses such as these, preventing unnecessary spend and highlighting areas for policy training.
14. Monitored Employees Audit: Expense reports from certain employees may need to be monitored due to their history of expense violations, risky or fraudulent business behavior, or sensitive roles. The Monitored Employees Audit App enables you to audit specific employees any time they submit an expense report above preset spend thresholds, thereby controlling expenses proactively.
15. Blocklisted Merchant Detection: The Blocklisted Merchant Detection App enables auditors to flag payments to undesirable suppliers. As a result, companies can minimize maverick spend and achieve employee compliance around spending only with preferred suppliers offering the best terms. It helps minimize the use of unapproved merchants by employees.
16. Personal Expense Detection: The Personal Expense Detection App flags employee expense lines that are marked by employees for personal purposes, or for which they are not seeking reimbursement. T&E and finance managers need to know the nature of employee purchases made using corporate credit cards. Even when employees check the “personal - do not reimburse” box on an expense line, auditors benefit from tracking whether those items or services are allowed, restricted, or illegal. Visibility into spending can also help managers adjust expense policies to meet employees' evolving needs, given the ever-changing nature of the workplace.

17. Missing Tax Detection: Are there certain tax codes that must be present on a receipt? With the new Missing Tax Detection App, AppZen can now detect if receipts do not have specific tax codes included. This App helps ensure your T&E management remains compliant with tax regulations and avoid hefty fines.

AppStore - Premium Apps

The model listed below is part of our Premium App offering. A Premium App is a custom model that is being made available on our AppStore for a fee. Check out our website to request more information on the AppStore models and an AppZen representative will contact you with the next steps on the model that you are interested in. 

1. Fapiao Authenticity Check: Ensure compliance per Chinese government records, in addition to tracking data required for compliance. This App checks the validity of your fapiao receipts by checking their presence in the Tax Bureau’s database via ZBJ’s API service. This App goes beyond AppZen’s Standard Fapiao Validation App which uses four custom models to determine whether receipts have the correct fapiao information on them. The Fapiao Authenticity Check App provides a fifth model that extracts key data required by the Tax Bureau and validates it using the ZBJ API service.
2. Monitor Cash Expenses: The Monitor Cash Expenses App flags cash or out-of-pocket expense lines that exceed the set threshold amount within the configured timeframe. This ensures employees are compliant with any company policy requiring the use of corporate credit cards, so auditors can actively monitor out-of-pocket spend.
3. Advanced Spend Anomaly Detection: The Advanced Spend Anomaly Detection App monitors and flags aggregate expenses for a single employee that exceed thresholds, based on your specified timeframe. For example, this App could be set up to flag any employee expenses greater than $250 within the calendar year. If the total, aggregated spend amount exceeds that $250 threshold, the expense line is flagged as medium or high risk. This App ensures employees do not abuse policies where stipends are provided, so auditors can focus on other company audit priorities.
4. Suspicious Spend Detection: It's difficult for T&E management to identify abuses of policy when employees consistently submit requests just below the required threshold, allowing them to escape receipt verification. The Suspicious Spend Detection App helps auditors detect and monitor employees who exhibit this type of suspicious spend behavior. The App allows you to configure the threshold amount, the threshold frequency, and whether a receipt attachment verification is required. It then flags expenses for employees that consistently expense lines with an amount just under the specified limit, within your specified timeframe. With the Suspicious Spend Detection App, you can more easily identify employees abusing company policy who otherwise might fly under the radar.
5. Hotel Itemization Auto-reject: The Hotel Itemization Auto-reject App is a Premium App that works in conjunction with the Receipt Itemization Verification Check App. It reduces the manual efforts of auditors by automatically rejecting an expense report when the App flags it as high risk because it does not include an itemized receipt.

AppZen Custom Models

Custom Model – Small is a model that only utilizes data and information available within the expense report and is stored within the AppZen database. 

Custom Model – Large is a model that utilizes data and information available within the expense report, historically submitted expense reports of the company/user, or data available outside of AppZen using external data sources.

AppZen Expense Audit Bundles

In order to provide even more out of a customer's investment in AppZen and to deliver the most value in their solution, we will be offering three different editions of our Expense Audit product. Those editions are defined in the chart below.

Please note that these are also available to be purchased separately.

AppZen Spend Audit

AppZen Spend Audit enables finance and audit teams to audit all spend on AP invoices, expense reports, corporate and procurement cards, and GL payment journals. AppZen Spend Audit is powered by AI, and detects issues by reading images, unstructured data buried in expense and invoice documents, level 3 card data, as well any spend data in ERP/AP/P2P systems and CSV format files.

Clients can identify potential duplicate spend across expenses, card data, and invoices- across all their systems, prior to payment. AppZen’s AI models triangulate thousands of data points in real-time for all transactions. AppZen Spend Audit detects unauthorized expenses and non-compliant spend that can only be found by reading invoice documents, receipt images, Level 3 card data, and payments transactions. AppZen Spend Audit’s AI models detect duplicates and high-risk transactions using powerful computer vision and NLP technology trained over millions of documents across hundreds of AppZen customers.

With AppZen Spend Audit, clients can ensure that purchases and spend across all forms are compliant with their Finance policies. They can automate their unique policies and standard operating procedures, with custom AI models and processing rules.

AppZen Spend Audit detects potential fraud and misuse through spend anomaly detection, which is hard to identify manually. It flags debarred suppliers across the global, country, and industry-specific sanctioned entity and persons lists. It continuously monitors anti-bribery, FCPA, SDN, and other legislation. It can reduce auditor effort by 90% and issue to action time by 80%.

Clients can create a single view of P-Card, T&E, and AP spend across all systems and providers. It provides out-of-the-box integrations with all major applications, as well as CSV-based integration and open APIs. It also provides finance managers and auditors with self-serve and end-user analytics to review and action spend transactions.

Spend Audit is comprised of Invoice Audit, Card Audit, and Expense Audit.

Invoice Audit

Invoice Audit is a component of Spend Audit, where we connect to your AP solution, to review your invoice data. We can look at invoices by PDF or electronic data depending how you inherit your invoices.

Invoice Audit will look for duplicate invoices within your AP solution that can eliminate double payments, and it can look across your Expense Management system to see if any of those invoices were found within an expense report that can also cause a double payment. An example of a cross system check is your expenses are in a Concur system but your invoices are done in Oracle system.

As we connect to your AP solution, we are also connect to your vendor master to review your vendor list. We can comply with compliance regulations and ensure that none of your vendors are listed in a debarred report in real time. We can also spot out any anomaly invoice amounts that may seem out of the ordinary.

Anomaly invoice check can spot out if an invoice has come in to your system that is outside of the normal pattern or amount that is regularly paid.

Invoice Audit will focus on 3 main areas.

1. Duplicate Invoices that can be within your AP system, or across your AP and Expense System to eliminate double payments. This check is too time consuming for manual employees to check in real time for every transaction.
2. It will look for debarred vendors for compliance in real time to ensure your working with valid vendors. This is also too difficult for manual employees to be looking up in real time for every vendor listed.
3. Anomaly invoices will look over frequencies and totals that are submitted by your suppliers.This feature will spot out outlier spend behavior, or any suspicious activity.

AppZen Professional Services

AppZen can provide initial onboarding and implementation services for our software solutions based upon the customer requirements, size of deployment, number of countries deployed, and integrations with customer legacy software.  

Support

AppZen provides a team of AI & finance experts to guide your corporate spend journey, maximizing your ROI and tailoring AppZen to your goals.

Our team of experts knows AppZen AI and knows finance, helping you maximize ROI. Our experts are available to you every step of the way.

We proactively monitor your finance back-off performance against best practices validated by 100s of CFOs and 1,000s of customers, and tailor business reviews so 
 you maximize value.

We help you define what great looks like and build a step-by-step action plan to get you there with a proven discovery process that matches your business goals with best practices, benchmarks, and methodologies that have worked successfully for similar companies.

Our support comes in two levels: Standard Care and Expert Care you can choose depending on your needs. Our Standard support package is included with your AppZen purchase, while ExpertCare is available for purchase with an extra charge.