What is auto-categorisation?
Auto-categorisation has been developed to save your organisation time in your bookkeeping process by automatically suggesting expense categories and tax rates for expenses. The auto-categorisation feature uses generative AI to suggest the category and tax rate for expenses.
What is Generative AI?
“Generative AI refers to deep-learning models that can take raw data – say, all of your historical bookkeeping data – and ‘learn’ to generate statistically probable outputs when prompted.”
Source (IBM 2023)
How auto-categorisation works
Auto-categorisation uses your historical expense data to suggest expense categories and tax rates for expenses.
It takes the merchant name, existing categories, and historical choices, and tries to identify patterns.
Values are proposed only when the confidence of a correct suggestion is high.
Suggestions improve over time! This means that, based on the frequency with which you associate a category and a merchant, the model will provide more accurate results.
How to start using auto-categorisation
If you are using the Expend web app or the latest version of the mobile app, you will already have access to auto-categorisation.
The model will be learning in the background from your bookkeeping straight away. Suggested values have an “AI” icon to help you recognise them.
How to confirm or edit the automatic suggestion
If you are happy with the suggestion, you can go ahead and click Save or Submit.
If you don’t agree with the suggestion, simply select the correct value in the field before you click Save or Submit. Changes you make will be taken into account in future suggestions.
Turning auto-categorisation on or off
To turn auto-categorisation on or off, you need to be logged in as a user with the Administrator or Financial Reviewer role.
In the sidebar menu, go Settings and select Categories & Mapping.
Click the switch at the top of the page to turn the feature on or off.
The bottom line
The more you do your expenses with Expend, the more accurate suggestions you will receive, saving you significant time during reconciliation!