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Exploring the Basics of Audit Rules

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to describe audit rules.

Unit Overview

This unit explores the essential components of the Audit Rules. Throughout this unit, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of the Audit Rules, including insights into how to access and manage them.

At the end of this unit, you will be able to:

Describe the Audit Rules.
Access the Audit Rules.
Discuss Conditions and Exceptions.
Explain Triggers.
Describe the use of multiple expense types for Audit Rules.
Discuss the use of multilevel lists for Audit Rules.
Add a new Audit Rule.
Edit an existing Audit Rule.
Activate, deactivate, and remove an Audit Rule.

Basics of Audit Rules

The Compliance Controls - Custom Audit Rules page. The page allows users to define custom audit rules to evaluate expenses. There are four tabs at the top: Compliance Rules, Receipt Handling Options, Expense Limits, and Custom Audit Rules, with the Custom Audit Rules tab highlighted. Below, there is a table listing various audit rules with columns for Name, Event, Exception Code, Applies To, and Active status. The table includes rules such as Actual vs. Booked, Airfare, Drive Not Used, and Duplicate Ticket Number, among others. Options to create, modify, copy, activate, deactivate, and remove rules are available.

What Is an Audit Rule?

An Audit Rule is a predefined guideline or condition that helps ensure compliance with company policies and external regulations during the expense reporting process. These rules automatically review submitted expense reports to identify potential issues or discrepancies, such as:

Missing receipts
Expenses exceeding set limits
Noncompliant categories (for example personal expenses, or out-of-pocket purchases)
Duplicate submissions

When an expense report triggers an audit rule, it can be flagged for further review by an Approver, Expense Processor, or require corrective action by the Submitter (Traveler). Audit rules can help companies maintain accurate financial records and mitigate the risk of fraud or policy violations withing the expense processes.

Audit Rules can either be applied by default for all customers or tailored specifically to a company needs by its administrators. These customizable rules are used to monitor information entered by expense users, and are triggered by an event. You can tailor custom audit rules to specific rules regarding expenses for your company.

Caution

Only SAP Concur can enable the custom audit rules functionality.

Provided Audit Rules

Your system has provided audit rules. Instead of having to create all new rules, you can simply activate (and edit) the provided rules. Use this information to create new rules, or edit and activate the provided rules.

Use Custom Audit rules to Monitor the activity of Expense users, for example to:

Monitor the use of preferred vendors.
Monitor all expense reports submitted by a particular employee.
Track amounts spent on attendees.

Custom Audit rules Can Apply to:

Expenses related to vendors, expense amounts, dates, project codes, and so on.
Expense reports related to reports totals, approval status, report date, and so on.
Attendees.

Benefits of Using Audit Rules

What Are the Benefits of Using Audit rules?

Increased policy compliance - Audit rules help enforce company-specific policies by automatically flagging any noncompliant expenses, reducing the chances of policy violations.
Fraud prevention - By identifying duplicate expenses, missing receipts, or out-of-pocket claims, audit rules can help detect and prevent fraudulent activity.
Time savings - Automation of expense auditing reduces the time and effort required for manual reviews, allowing the finance team to focus on more critical tasks.
Error reduction - Audit rules catch common errors, such as incorrect amounts or currency conversions, ensuring more accurate expense reporting.
Consistent enforcement - These rules ensure consistent enforcement of policies across all employees and departments, creating a fair and transparent expense management process.

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