Activating a Custom Audit Rule

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to activate an existing audit rule and describe its impact on users.

Audit Rules Overview

You can use configurable audit rules to enforce expense policies, ensure compliance, and reduce the risk of errors or fraud. These rules automatically review submitted expense reports for specific criteria—such as duplicate expenses, policy violations, or missing receipts—and flag or prevent submission when they detect exceptions.

Audit rules are if/then statements that trigger when something on an expense report is against company policy. Each audit rule contains three components:

  • General Settings: Defines the basic settings of the rule, such as when the rule evaluates and which groups the rule applies to.
  • Conditions: Defines the criteria that determine whether a rule is considered broken.
  • Exception: Determines the actions that occur when the rule is broken, such as what the message is, who sees it, and whether it is a red or yellow flag.
The image displays an Audit Rules administration page in an expense management system. The main panel shows tabs for Custom, Random, and Validation, a filter dropdown labeled “Find audit rules when,” a search field, and action buttons New, Modify, Copy, Activate, Deactivate, and Remove. A table lists audit rules with columns for Name, Event, Exception Code, Editable By, Applies To, and Active.

Activate an Existing Audit Rule

Before working with audit rules, please note that it's recommended to make copies of the pre-built audit rules and them modify your copies as needed. This practice preserves the original rules.

To activate an existing audit rule:

Steps

  1. Select Audit Rules.

    The image displays an Audit Rules administration screen in an expense system. Tabs labeled Custom, Random, and Validation appear above filters, a search box, and a Search button. Buttons New, Modify, Copy, Activate, Deactivate, and Remove sit above a table. The table lists rules with columns Name, Event, Exception Code, Editable By, Applies To, and Active.

  2. On the Custom tab, select the existing rule that has the most appropriate conditions, and then select Copy.

    The image displays an Audit Rules page in an expense administration tool. Tabs show Custom, Random, and Validation. Filters and a search box appear above action buttons: New, Modify, Copy, Activate, Deactivate, Remove. The Copy button is highlighted. In the list, the Car Rental Preferred Vendor rule is selected; its details show Event: Entry Save, Exception Code: PREFVEN, Editable By: *Global, Applies To: *Global, Active: No.

  3. Rename the rule and then select Next. It’s recommended that you add an asterisk as the first character in a rule name and then use your company’s naming convention to identify that you are using the rule.

    The image displays an Audit Rules list with tabs for Custom, Random, and Validation. Filters and a search box appear above action buttons. The Copy button is highlighted. The Car Rental Preferred Vendor rule is selected, showing Event Entry Save, Exception Code PREFVEN, Editable By Global, Applies To Global, and Active No.

  4. On the Conditions tab, select Next.

    The image displays the Conditions step for the audit rule. A condition sets Value to Hertz. Another condition checks Entry Personal Expense equals No. A third condition checks Entry Has Comments not equal Yes. Insert and Remove buttons appear at the top. A Next button appears at the bottom right.

  5. On the Exceptions tab, select Done.

    The image displays the Exception step for the audit rule. Exception Visibility is Traveler, Approver and Expense Processor. Exception Code is PREFVEN. Exception Level is 1. Exception Text reads: You have selected a non-preferred vendor. Please provide an explanation. A table of exception codes and messages appears below. A Done button appears at the bottom right.

Summary

  • Duplicate a pre-built rule for modification.
  • Rename the rule using a company-defined naming convention.
  • Review and confirm the conditions and exceptions.
  • Activate the rule to enforce expense policies.

Learning

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