Forensic Review of Expense Claims

• Forensic Services Partner
• Head of Internal Audit
• Chief Financial Officer
• Ethics and Compliance Officer

Travel and expense fraud rarely shows up in a single claim. It shows up as the same hotel bill submitted by two employees, restaurant bills produced from online templates, claims split to stay under an approval limit, or fuel bills on days the employee was on leave. Forensic and internal audit teams usually test a sample, because opening every receipt across a year of claims is not practical by hand.

We build a forensic review pipeline that ingests a period's expense claims from the expense or ERP system together with the receipt images and PDFs. It reads each receipt independently of what the employee typed, then runs tests across the full population: duplicate and near-duplicate receipts across employees, signs of edited amounts or dates, vendor invoice numbers out of sequence, invalid GSTINs, claims on leave days or outside travel dates, splits below approval limits, and policy breaches by grade and city. Each claim gets a list of triggered tests with the evidence behind them. Investigators work a ranked queue, and the system never labels anyone as having committed fraud.

• Reads receipts, hotel folios, cab and fuel bills, and compares them with the claimed values
• Near-duplicate detection using image similarity and extracted fields across employees and periods
• Alteration indicators such as inconsistent totals, edited dates and repeated bill templates
• Cross-checks with travel bookings, leave and attendance records, and policy limits by grade and city
• Pattern tests for split claims under approval limits, round-sum amounts and holiday claims
• Ranked case queue with an evidence pack for each flagged claim

1. 01Extract claims and receiptsClaims, line items and receipt files for the review period are exported from the expense or ERP system.
2. 02Read receipts independentlyOCR and an LLM read each receipt so its values can be compared with what was claimed.
3. 03Join reference dataLeave, attendance, travel bookings, corporate card data and policy limits are linked to each claim.
4. 04Run forensic testsDuplicate, alteration, policy and pattern tests run across the whole population.
5. 05Investigate ranked casesClaims above the risk threshold go to investigators, who decide what to examine and what any finding is.
6. 06Assemble evidenceConfirmed findings get an evidence pack for the investigation report; cleared claims keep their test results.

1. Data intake
   • Expense system export
   • Receipt image store
   • HRMS leave and attendance data
   • Travel desk and corporate card data
2. Receipt understanding
   • OCR and receipt field extractor
   • Image similarity index
3. Forensic tests
   • Duplicate and near-duplicate detector
   • Alteration indicator checks
   • Policy and pattern rule engine
4. Case management
   • Risk ranking
   • Investigator workbench
   • Evidence pack generator

Investigators decide which cases to pursue and what any finding is. Employee interviews, conclusions and any disciplinary step remain with the forensic team, HR and management; system outputs are leads, not findings.

• SAP Concur, Zoho Expense or ERP travel and expense modules
• HRMS such as SAP SuccessFactors, Darwinbox or Keka
• Corporate card and travel desk data feeds
• Case management tool or the firm's investigation workbooks

• Outputs describe indicators, never fraud or guilt
• Access limited to named investigators on a need-to-know basis
• Every test result reproducible from stored inputs
• Only the fields needed for the tests are processed
• No automatic action against any employee

• Employee personal data is processed for a defined investigation purpose, designed to support DPDP Act 2023 obligations on purpose limitation and security safeguards.
• Evidence handling follows the firm's chain-of-custody approach for forensic engagements.

• Accounting, Audit & Consulting

  Audit Sampling and Vouching from Invoices

  Select samples from the ledger, pull invoices, GRNs and payment proofs, and check each voucher against the entry, with every exception sent to the audit senior.

• Insurance

  Tampered and Fraudulent Document Detection

  Score claim documents for signs of editing, fabrication and reuse, explain each signal, and route high-risk files to your investigation team instead of labelling anyone a fraudster.

• Accounting, Audit & Consulting

  GST Return Reconciliation (GSTR-2B vs Books)

  Match GSTR-2B and 2A data against the purchase register invoice by invoice, find ITC at risk before GSTR-3B is filed, and draft supplier follow-ups for approval.

• Accounting, Audit & Consulting

  Bank and Ledger Reconciliation

  Match bank statements in any format against the cash book or ledger, explain unmatched items and produce a BRS the reviewer can tick through, with ambiguous matches held for a person.