More cash flow

VAT refunds are costly, complex and error-prone. Not only are there an increasing number of regulations and compliance obligations, but in addition these regulations have recently been changing steadily internationally. Last year alone, 24 countries implemented a temporary change to their VAT.

It is almost impossible to keep up to date with the current situation. In addition, tax authorities are requesting more and more data around transaction processes. Manual review of submitted receipts and statements can therefore become very time-consuming and cost-intensive - especially if reports are rejected by the tax authorities.

Companies are also worried about falling into the compliance trap in view of this regulatory quagmire. A recent SAP-Concur study shows that 39 percent of German companies expect even more frequent checks and more fines for compliance violations in the future. This is because the tax authorities are also increasingly digitizing their auditing processes - errors in the information provided by companies are quickly found, and severe penalties are an increasing risk.

For Concur Expense users, this year saw the launch of an intelligent, AI-based solution that works with the SAP-
Partner and VATBox is offered. The application extends Concur's cloud-based travel expense management with the VAT reimbursement process into a continuous, automated, end-to-end, one-stop process: from voucher submission to expense and travel claims.

How can artificial intelligence help with VAT refunds? In the first step, the tool reconstructs the entire journey and interprets it according to its context in the second step. Transactions with refund potential are identified, and submitted receipts are checked for validity and completeness. Every single piece of information on the receipts is examined.

To do this, the solution continuously integrates and updates all global tax regulations. The monitoring and updating of global tax changes are thus digitally optimized and compliance for different legal systems and organizational units is ensured. The artificial intelligence learns to recognize patterns based on the data of the more than 4.6 million suppliers and service providers registered with VATBox. In this way, the validation workflow is constantly refined.

Volatile and complex rules 

Compliance, cash flow, relief: three quick wins with one solution. Due to the automated processing, significantly fewer errors are made when submitting and checking receipts, so that - despite the increasingly volatile and complex regulations - compliance is significantly increased. The tool protects against fines from tax authorities. Companies get the refund out, while at the same time the refund process is simplified and accelerated.

Employees along the entire reimbursement process are relieved. This applies both to traveling colleagues, who only need to submit expense reports or receipts, and to the finance department, as the tool automatically completes and validates all relevant information. 

The data sources are integrated in a workflow. Users can retrieve, analyze and visualize the process steps in a dashboard. This not only prepares them for audits and regulatory reviews at any time. The dashboard also creates transparency across each process step so that common sources of error can be uncovered and expenses can be efficiently managed - as they occur.

Nearly half of the non-reimbursable receipts are due to duplicates submitted by mistake or missing receipt data such as a forgotten company address. Such avoidable errors are uncovered thanks to the clear preparation of the data and can be prevented in the future. 

The process described runs in the background without any additional work for finance managers. Various API interfaces and extraction scripts enable the automatic integration of data from Concur Expense with just one click. (pmf)