Automated Expense Auditing: How Sixthfin Uses AI to Ensure Compliance

How does AI-powered expense compliance software work?

Sixthfin’s T&E Controls is an AI-powered software designed to audit 100% of travel and expense claims after they are approved. The company, which maintains offices in London and Paris, launched the solution on 6 October 2026.

It provides finance, audit, and internal control departments with a tool to review every expense claim rather than relying on manual processes. Reports confirming the launch were published on 20 October 2026.

Why is automated expense auditing replacing manual spot checks?

Organizations are moving away from manual spot checks of small samples to continuous, AI-powered monitoring of all expense data. According to Jean-Marc Allouët, President of Sixthfin, checking expenses occasionally is no longer sufficient to ensure compliance.

The goal is to verify that control systems work effectively over time by measuring the success of those controls and identifying behavioral anomalies. By using AI to surface recurring patterns and exceptions across all employees and entities, the software helps move control beyond the limitations of manual sampling.

This approach facilitates a shift from a transaction-focused method to a continuous, comprehensive view of expenses, approvals, and their accounting treatment.

How does the software detect hidden expense fraud?

The software analyses expense claims over time and across entities to detect duplicates, recurring anomalies, high-risk behaviours, and approval failures. It identifies potential duplicate claims by flagging entries that involve the same merchant, amount, location, and date. These patterns often appear compliant when you review them individually, but the software identifies them through broader cross-entity analysis.

The system also flags repeated claims of the same type and amount, as well as unusual concentrations of spending in specific categories. You can track chronic late submissions across months, employees, and entities to spot irregular behavior. The tool identifies employees with an anomaly rate that is significantly higher than the average. The system reconciles expense data with the general ledger to identify discrepancies between approved and posted amounts.

How does the system evaluate approval quality?

The software assesses the quality of your expense approvals by monitoring several specific indicators. It flags claims approved by someone other than the expected approver and tracks instances of recurring approval delegations.

The system identifies alerts that were raised but never actioned, as well as unusual approval turnaround times. It also tracks whether employees or approvers account for a disproportionate share of exceptions. Finally, the software highlights discrepancies between approved amounts and the amounts recorded in your accounting records.

How does this help with UK regulatory compliance?

Sixthfin T&E Controls helps you document your internal control framework and track anomalies to provide evidence that your procedures are effective. This is particularly relevant for the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which introduced a failure to prevent fraud offence for large organizations effective 1 September 2025; having reasonable fraud prevention procedures in place is your principal defence.

For bribery, Section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010 similarly establishes that adequate procedures are the defence against the corporate offence of failing to prevent bribery. Provision 29 of the UK Corporate Governance Code 2024, effective for financial years starting on or after 1 January 2026, requires boards of companies within its scope to declare the effectiveness of their material internal controls.

What are the technical requirements for reconciliation?

The software complements your existing expense management tools by analyzing 100% of claims over time and reconciling them with your general ledger. To perform this, the system requires that you post expense claims to your accounts individually rather than in aggregate.

The software then cross-references this data with your accounting records to identify missing claims, accounting entries without matching expense claims, and discrepancies between approved and posted amounts. It also monitors for abnormal delays in posting and other processing or reconciliation anomalies. By assessing approval quality and reconciling data, the system identifies missing transactions, posting discrepancies, and recurring control failures.

This approach helps you detect duplicates, high-risk behaviors, and approval failures that standard transaction-by-transaction controls often miss. The reconciliation process performed by T&E Controls requires expense claims to be posted to the accounts individually rather than in aggregate.