Navan has launched a new automated auditing system with configurable checks to flag risk and fraud in transactions, the travel and expense platform announced.
Navan's Audit Engine, now available to all customers globally, broadens auditing capabilities for the platform, which already checks transactions against companies' spend policies. The engine provides more than 45 configurable auditing checks, such as excessive tipping, AI-generated receipts, weekend spending, mismatches of receipt amounts and purchase of such prohibited items as alcohol and tobacco, the company said.
"Our Audit Engine uses multiple [Large Language Models] to test every transaction against customizable audit checks," Navan chief product officer for payments and expense Yuval Refua said in a statement. "Acting as a force multiplier for finance teams, Navan eliminates hours of detective work and lets them focus only on the transactions that truly require human judgment."
A Navan spokesperson said the official launch brings together continuous work that has been underway on the Audit Engine. AI receipt scanning, for example, began last October, and in December the company introduced the ability to flag their chosen keywords, such as "spa," "minibar" or "Uber Black."
The company said that it has already flagged about 30,000 instances of excessive tipping and hundreds of AI-generated receipts so far this year. Overall, about three-quarters of transactions are approved automatically, leaving 25 percent flagged for human review, the company said.
Navan also has developed an anti-corruption and bribery flag for the Audit Engine, which monitors for transactions that violate the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, such as transactions to politically exposed or sanctioned individuals. Violations can result in heavy fines and traditionally have required compliance tools outside of the T&E workflow to detect, according to Navan.
The anti-corruption and bribery check is currently in beta and will be rolling out this month, according to the spokesperson.