How AI took T.D. Williamson’s expense auditing from Stone Age to cutting edge

Efficiency is paramount in corporate finance. But for T.D. Williamson, a global onshore and offshore pipeline performance company with over 1,500 employees, the expense auditing process was stuck in the distant past. Andrew Aguirre , T.D. Williamson’s Corporate Treasurer, recently shared his company's journey from manual, inconsistent expense reporting to an AI-powered system that's changing the game.

"We were in the Stone Ages with regard to how we would do expenses," Aguirre recalled. He referred to “arts and crafts expenses,” where "receipts were getting taped to pieces of paper. You go to the copy machine, you scan it in, it gets routed to somebody in accounting to review and code."

The company's first step was implementing an expense reporting platform. However, they quickly realized that without an internal audit function, they lacked insight into policy compliance and consistency in approvals.

AppZen’s AI-powered Expense Audit solution helped T.D. Williamson establish a robust internal audit function without adding headcount. The system's natural workflow enforces policy consistently, flagging high-risk items for human review and providing immediate feedback to employees.

One of the most impressive aspects of the new system is its efficiency. T.D. Williamson’s 3 auditors now handle all of their 9,000 expense reports a fraction of the time. Aguirre attributes this to the system's ability to focus on what truly matters. Now they can zero in on high-risk transactions because low- and medium-risk reports are auto-approved.

They were also able to fine-tune their adjustments. "We looked at items…that had a very high frequency of getting flagged as high risk," Aguirre explained. Where those flagged items were often approved after review, “You don't have to adjust your policy, which is a question more for an audit team to ask themselves,” he suggested. "Maybe you change it from high risk to medium risk. You don't have to change your policy, you're just changing that risk level inside of the system so that you can process those expense reports in a much more effective manner."

The company also uses AppZen's Team Insights reporting tool to gain deeper visibility into spending patterns and policy compliance within and across different departments. This automated, customizable reporting has proven invaluable as the organization evolves.

Looking ahead, T.D. Williamson is exploring AppZen Card Audit and Autonomous AP accounts payable solutions to bring even more efficiency to their financial operations.

For companies still grappling with manual processes and inconsistent policy enforcement, T.D. Williamson's story makes a compelling case for embracing AI in financial operations. It's about more than cutting costs–it's about gaining insights, improving compliance, and freeing up valuable human resources to focus on strategic initiatives.

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