Overview

Expense categories are the labels assigned to expenses within your organization to ensure accurate expense tracking and simplify reconciliation. Users can pre-code expense categories on virtual cards and automatically or manually assign categories to cleared transactions.

This article covers how to use AI Expense Category Coding to help your organization code transactions faster by using your organization’s past coding history to suggest or apply likely expense category labels.

AI Expense Category Coding includes:

• Smart Suggestions
  Extend displays up to 5 recommended labels at the top of the expense category dropdown.
• Auto-Coding
  Extend automatically applies a predicted label to the Account expense category when there is enough coding history to make a recommendation.

Note: AI Expense Category Coding is available for Pro and Enterprise organizations with an active accounting platform connection.

How to enable AI Expense Category Coding

Owners and Admins can enable AI Expense Category Coding Owners by following these steps:

1. From the Home Page select Settings from the menu and navigate to the Org Settings > Rules & Workflows > Automations section
2. You'll see the option to enable AI Expense Category Coding at the top of the page, toggle on to enable. Extend will then prepare your organization’s historical transaction data to learn from your previous coding patterns. Suggestions and predictions may not appear until setup is complete

Note: This process can take up to 10 minutes.

 

Using AI Smart Suggestions

Smart Suggestions appear when users code transactions manually.

All members of your organization can use AI Smart Suggestions when coding transactions. To use AI Smart Suggestions:

1. Find the transaction you wish to code
2. Select any expense category dropdown 
3. You will see AI suggested labels appear at the top of the dropdown.
4. Select the suggested label you want to apply and Extend will save your selection immediately.

Note: If Extend does not have enough history to recommend a label, Smart Suggestions will not appear.

Using AI Auto-Coding 

When Extend has enough confidence in a prediction, it will automatically apply a label to the Account expense category. You will be able to see transactions that have been automatically coded when viewing your transaction list

Simply look for the AI icon next to the applied Account category. You can leave the category as is or update if needed. Once a user manually updates the category, Extend will preserve the user’s selection and learn from the changes made.

Frequently asked questions

1. Can users change AI-applied categories?
   Yes. Users can update AI-applied categories at any time.
    
2. Will Extend overwrite manually coded transactions?
   No. Transactions that were manually coded will not be overwritten by AI.

3. Which expense categories can Auto-Coding apply?
   Auto-Coding only applies to the Account expense category. Additional categories will be available soon. 
    
4. Why don’t I see Smart Suggestions?
   Smart Suggestions may not appear if Extend does not have enough historical coding data for your organization.
    
5. Do I need an accounting integration to use AI Expense Category Coding?
   Yes. AI Expense Category Coding is only available for organizations with an accounting integration