Expense Report Approval

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Why Automate This?

• Reduce approval cycle from 3-5 days to same-day
• Eliminate 5+ hours of manual routing per week
• Zero missed or forgotten expense reports
• Complete audit trail of all approvals

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What You’ll Build

1. Checks your expense system for submitted reports from the past week
2. Extracts employee details, amounts, and receipts
3. Looks up each employee’s manager in your HR system
4. Sends a formatted approval email with the report attached
5. Updates the expense system status to “Pending Approval”

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Before You Start

Create Your Agent

1. Click ”+ Create Agent” from your dashboard
2. Select “Use Agent Builder” (recommended for this tutorial)

Describe Your Workflow

Paste this prompt into the Agent Builder:

Every Monday morning, check our expense management system for expense reports submitted in the past 7 days that have status "Submitted".

For each report:
1. Extract the employee name, email, report ID, total amount, submission date, and all line items with receipts
2. Look up the employee's direct manager in the HR system
3. Send an email to the manager with subject "Expense Report Approval Required - [Employee Name] - [Report ID]"
4. Include the report summary and total amount in the email body
5. Attach the expense report PDF
6. Update the report status to "Pending Manager Approval"

If a manager can't be found, escalate to the department head.
If the expense system is unavailable, retry after 30 minutes.

Click “Generate” to create the agent AOP.

Review Generated AOP

Duvo will generate structured AOP based on your description. Review it to ensure:

• All systems are correctly identified (expense system, HR system, email)
• The approval workflow matches your process
• Error handling covers your edge cases

You can edit the AOP directly if you need to adjust any details.

Configure Connections

The agent needs access to your systems. Click “Connections” and ensure:

1. Expense system - Add logins for your expense management platform
2. Email - Connect your Gmail or Outlook account
3. HR system (if using) - Add logins for manager lookup

Test Your Agent

Before scheduling, run a test:

1. Click “Run Agent”
2. Watch the agent execute each step in real-time
3. Review the session log to verify correct behavior

What to check:

• Did it find the correct expense reports?
• Did it identify the right managers?
• Did the email look correct? (Check your sent folder)
• Did the status update in your expense system?

Schedule Weekly Runs

Once testing is successful, set up the Monday schedule:

1. Go to Agent Settings > Schedule
2. Select Weekly on Monday at 8:00 AM
3. Save the schedule

Your agent will now automatically process expense reports every Monday morning.

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Expected Results

• All “Submitted” reports now show “Pending Manager Approval”
• Activity log shows the agent’s actions

• Formatted approval emails with report summaries
• PDF attachments with full expense details
• Clear approve/reject call-to-action

• Complete session log showing each step
• Audit trail of all emails sent and status updates

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Troubleshooting

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Take It Further

If total amount exceeds $5,000, also CC the finance director.
If total amount exceeds $10,000, require VP approval.

Before routing for approval, check that all line items over $25 have receipt images attached.
If receipts are missing, return the report to the employee with a note.

After sending the approval email, also post a summary to #finance-approvals in Slack.

If the report is more than 5 days old, mark the email as high priority.

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