New Expense Protect tool uses machine learning to detect duplicate records

Launched on July 1, 2025, Expense Protect, a new tool powered by machine learning, is helping WSU staff in travel and expenses catch and eliminate duplicate Expense Reports. This innovation is a step toward harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (A.I.) to reduce administrative burden and detect errors with greater accuracy and efficiency.

How does Expense Protect work?

Expense Protect uses machine learning to review and identify duplicate non-itemized expenses against paid, in-progress expenses. Expense Protect compares new Expense Reports against other reports from a six-month period.

The tool evaluates the following fields to detect duplicates:

  • Amount
  • Currency
  • Expense Item
  • Expense Date
  • Payee

Expense Protect considers an expense a duplicate if either:

  • One of the expenses is an out of pocket expense and the other expense has a matching credit card transaction.
  • Both expenses are out of pocket expenses.

What is machine learning?

Machine learning is a type of A.I. In this article about how Workday uses machine learning, it is described as “a subfield of artificial intelligence focused on developing computers that learn similarly to humans. Through the use of algorithms that seek to imitate human intelligence, machine learning enables AI to improve outcomes through iteration. This ability to solve problems and generate predictions without explicit programming makes machine learning highly adaptable.”

While machine learning is a type of A.I., it is distinctly different from generative A.I. tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot. Learn more about types of A.I. and how they may be used at WSU in this panel discussion from the 2024 Elevating Cougs conference.

Workday’s use of A.I. and machine learning is

Designed to amplify, not replace, human decision making by providing recommendations and predictions that help people make better informed decisions.”

Workday

Learn more about Workday’s approach to A.I. in this whitepaper.

How was Expense Protect trained for WSU?

Expense Protect uses machine learning to examine Expense Reports and to accurately predict potential duplicate records. Expense Protect is what Workday calls a “tenant-specific model,” meaning it is trained on the historical data available within a customer’s tenant. Workday requires a tenant contain at least 10,000 completed Expense Reports to train Expense Protect.

During configuration, Expense Protect reviewed over 101,000 Expense Reports currently in WSU’s Workday system to learn to detect and predict duplicate values.

How will Expense Protect help WSU?

Reviewing large quantities of records to search for duplicates involves a great deal of time and administrative burden. Expense Protect will eliminate the need to review Expense Reports manually, and will help WSU identify potential duplicate reports earlier, allowing for action to be taken before payment is issues.

Duplicate records such as Expense Reports can be needles in a haystack. In testing, Expense Protect identified 6 duplicated Expense Reports that had been paid, out of 8,691. It also identified 12 additional duplicated in-progress reports, allowing employees to review and correct any issues before these reports were completed.

How do I interact with Expense Protect?

For the most part, Expense Protect runs in the background, automatically detecting potential duplicated Expense Reports. You don’t need to initiate a process or ask Expense Protect to review a report.

If Expense Protect detects a potential duplicate, it will notify the initiator of the Expense Report and prompt them to review and correct any issues. In some instances, managers responsible for reviewing Expense Reports may also need to review and submit a corrected report.

For instructions on how to complete these steps, review this new reference guide.

Moving forward

Expense Protect is the first Workday A.I. tool adopted by WSU. In the future, WSU may be able to implement even more tools like Expense Protect to reduce the burden involved with tasks, such as manually reviewing records and detecting duplicates and errors, that WSU employees perform every day. Tools like Expense Protect have the potential to promote efficiency and accuracy in business processes and data, empowering WSU employees to be more proactive and innovative in the ways they work.

Do you have questions about Expense Protect? Reach out to the Modernization Team at the Workday Service Desk.