Managing expenses on the go
Streamlining reimbursements by leveraging OCR, AI and taking full advantage of the native mobile environment.
product designer
2025
figma
Background & Problem
Procurify expense
Procurify is a spend management platform that helps organizations streamline purchasing and expense workflows. While it excels at managing procurement, we identified a growing need to address inefficiencies in expense reporting—especially for employees who travel frequently. Simplifying expense submissions became a key focus to improve user satisfaction and reduce friction in financial operations.
Current state
Employees can create expense reports and add items to those reports
On mobile, users can upload and attach images to their expenses
Once satisfied, users can submit expense reports to be approved and reimbursed
Problem
Where to turn our focus?
Personas in reimbursement
Spend Users
Needs to be Reimbursed
Speed
I’m on the go and don’t have time to sit and create expense reports.
Receipts
If I don’t deal with it immediately, I’m likely to lose my receipt.
Accounts Payable Specialist
responsible for reimbursements
Timing
Reimbursements should be filed as close to the transaction as possible.
Receipts
To reimburse employees seamlessly, I need “back-up” (receipts).
What the users and the data are telling us
Spend User
“If I don’t do something with my receipts on the same day as the transaction - forget it. They’re gone.”
“I need it to be quicker, I’ve used [other expense management tools] and it’s much faster.”
AP Specialist
“A lot of the time employees forget to add their expenses right away, one or two days later is fine, but months later will mess up our budgets.”
“The process for reimbursing something that doesn’t have back-up [receipt] is brutal, takes me half the day just to sort one out.”
Quantitative data
11 minutes and 18 seconds is the average time to complete an expense report.
40 - 80 expense reports per month for typical SMB customer.
Ideation & Concept Development
How Might We
Make the filing of expenses as convenient and simple as possible while ensuring accuracy and ease of use?
Brainstorming
We asked - why not flip the script on expense filing? Can we speed this up by allowing users to start with something they already have - a receipt.
Old flow, create reports first then add your receipts.
New flow, add a receipt and let AI do the hard work.
Convenience boosters
Optical character recognition, using software to parse an image file for text, extracting the text and using it in a meaningful way. Fortunately, we already have some OCR in the product that we can leverage.
Currently, to start an expense report you have to navigate to the expense part of the app and select “New” to initiate a new reporting process. We Brainstormed using floating-action-buttons and native widgets to get started quicker.
Solution & Implementation
The happiest path
Start with a receipt
You just made a purchase, let’s say you’re picking up food for the team
With your receipt in hand, just tap the Procurify icon on your phone
The app will open, ready for you to scan your receipt
Reporting made easy
Snap a quick pick and add it to a report or start a new one
OCR and AI will add an expense with your receipt
Add more expenses, edit the header details (location and department) or go right ahead and submit your report
iOS lock-screen widget
What is a lock-screen widget?
Available on iOS 16 or later, lock-screen widgets can be informational (telling you the weather or moon phase at a glance) or interactive (like Spotify’s widget, that triggers media to play in app
Our implementation
In interviews we found that many users are filing expense reports on work phones, we also know that a majority of users are on iOS, and a majority of them are on iOS 16 or later
We hypothesized that giving users a way to initiate the expense reporting flow from the lock screen would save them valuable time while on the go
Floating action button
What’s a FAB?
A floating, persistent button that doesn’t occupy too much screen real estate but gives you instant access to key functions of the app
Our implementation
Outside of expense there are actually a few jobs-to-be-done that require an image, and the advantage of our native mobile app is that our users can access high-definition cameras easily
Even without the lock-screen widget, we want to make it very easy for users to access their camera within the context of their Procurify tasks, that include uploading receipts as a part of filing expenses
Scanning a receipt
Purpose selection
This scanning feature scales nicely for users with more Procurify permissions beyond expenses, for e.g. users could use this to receive purchase orders by scanning packing slips
Add to existing
While many reports contain just one expense, users will also add several expenses to the same report
We commonly see this when users travel for work, incurring expenses gradually, but needed to log them against an existing expense report
Filing expenses and submitting a report
A new report
Provided the report hasn’t been started, the uploaded receipt will trigger the creation of a new report
It will also add the first expense to this report, and using OCR, populate key fields of the expense item
Ready to submit
Based on the policy configuration for each domain and department, this report may be ready to submit once an item has been added with a receipt, and categorized appropriately
Easy expense reporting start to finish
Track expense reports
Track your recently created expense report as it moves through approval routing
Come back to check on your reports and start new reports in a snap from your expense report feed
Impact & Results
Metrics
Prior to this project expense reports took a long time to file, often times as long as half an hour, but around 6 minutes on average. We’ve observed a trend of reports clocking under 60 seconds from initiation to submission.
Since launch, the new feature has been mentioned in 38% of favourable CSAT survey responses.
We’ve been monitoring the phones, but it seems the testing has paid off, for now.
Next steps
Automated coding & reporting
We’ll continue to improve the performance of the categorization and report title generation by training the system on past reports
Integrations with merchants
Ideally we could sync with your other digital partners, including rideshare apps like Uber, you shouldn’t have to upload that receipt manually, it could be added to a report of other expenses you incur on the same trip, for example
Extend OCR support across app
This project focussed on creating expense reports with receipts, our users could potentially also create purchase orders and receive purchases starting with an image
‘Share to’
Starting UX and technical investigation of leveraging the native “Share” function, think sharing email attachments like flight details triggering a new expense report