Expense receipt processing

Completed

You can use optical character recognition (OCR) technologies to streamline expenditure management procedures such as receipt scanning and expense entry.

The OCR feature enhances the user experience when reports on expenses are generated and includes the following options:

• The name, total amount spent, and date from the merchant are extracted from the receipt.
• The enhanced process tries to match unattached receipts to unattached expenses.
• Employees can create manually entered expense transactions from receipts.

The OCR feature is currently available through the Reimagined expense workspace on the desktop. Receipts that are captured by mobile are uploaded to the Receipts tab in the Reimagined expense workspace. Alternatively, users can also upload receipts directly from their computer.

From the Receipts tab, the OCR feature lets users extract receipt values and match them to an existing expense, or it enables them to quickly create a new expense line from the receipt. While this is a handy feature that helps reduce errors during the submittal process, OCR must first be installed and enabled. This feature works in tandem with the reimagined feature of the expense reports to simplify the experience of expenditures.

Note

Expense receipt processing is only available for Tier 2+ environments, which are production and sandbox.

For these advanced expense capabilities, install the Expense Management Service add-in for Project Operations and then enable the features in your instance. You can access the add-in from your project in Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services.

1. Sign in to Lifecycle Services and open your desired environment.
2. Go to Full details.
3. Select Maintain or scroll down to the Environment add-ins FastTab.
4. Select Install a new add-in.
5. Select Expense Management Service.
6. Follow the provided installation guide and then agree to the terms and conditions.
7. Select Install.

In the Feature management workspace, enable the following features:

• Expense reports re-imagined
• Auto-match and create expense from receipt

When you enable these features, the following actions occur:

• The existing Expense management workspace is replaced with the new Expense management re-imagined workspace.
• A new menu item for Expense field visibility is added.
• You can still open the former Expense reports page by going to Expense management > My expenses > Expense reports.
• Workflows and any approvals still take you to the existing Expense reports page.
• Receipts will be processed through Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services, and metadata will be extracted and added.
• A match option will become available that lets you match unattached receipts with existing expenses.
• A create option will become available that lets you create an expense line from a receipt or attempts to match an existing receipt to an existing expense line.

Watch the following video for a demonstration of expense receipt processing and OCR functionality.