Expense reimbursement method and expense management system

Abstract

An expense reimbursement method and an expense management system, for improving the efficiency of expense reimbursement and reducing the costs of expense reimbursement. The expense reimbursement method can be applied to the expense management system. The expense reimbursement method comprises: an expense management system receives a handling request for a reimbursement form, and then acquires a tag of the reimbursement form, wherein the tag of the reimbursement form is used for indicating an anomaly problem existing in the reimbursement form, and the anomaly problem existing in the reimbursement form comprises a problem of affecting the payment of reimbursement amount; and then the expense management system performs a corresponding anomaly handling operation on the reimbursement form on the basis of the tag of the reimbursement form. In this way, expense reimbursement is completed.

Description

Expense reimbursement method and expense management system

[0001] This application claims priority to the Chinese patent application filed with the State Intellectual Property Office of China on November 25, 2023, with application number 202311601375.9, and priority to the Chinese patent application entitled “Expense Reimbursement Method and Expense Management System”, all contents of which are incorporated by reference into this application. Technical Field

[0002] The present application relates to the field of computer technology, and in particular to an expense reimbursement method and an expense management system. Background Art

[0003] When a user submits an expense claim to an expense management system, the system typically needs to perform both business and financial processing to determine its rationality and compliance. Currently, expense management systems can perform these processes by assigning claims to business and financial approvers. However, this manual processing method is costly and inefficient, leading to high expense reimbursement costs and low efficiency. Summary of the Invention

[0004] This application provides an expense reimbursement method and an expense management system that can improve the efficiency of expense reimbursement and reduce the cost of expense reimbursement.

[0005] In a first aspect, the present application provides an expense reimbursement method. This method can be applied to an expense management system. Specifically, the expense management system receives a request to process an expense report and then obtains a tag from the report. The tag indicates any abnormalities in the report, including issues that affect the reimbursement amount. The expense management system then performs corresponding exception handling operations on the report based on the tag.

[0006] In the technical solution provided by this application, the expense management system can identify any anomalies in the reimbursement form based on its tags and then determine how to handle the reimbursement form, thereby enabling expense reimbursement. This process can reduce the workload of manually processing reimbursement forms, thereby improving the efficiency of expense reimbursement and reducing the cost of expense reimbursement.

[0007] In one possible implementation, before obtaining a label for a reimbursement form, the expense management system also obtains a process template that matches the reimbursement form and processes the reimbursement form according to the reimbursement processing flow defined in the process template, wherein the process template includes a label generation step. The expense management system obtains the label for the reimbursement form by, during the label generation step in the process template, adding a label to the reimbursement form according to the labeling rules corresponding to the label generation step. The label on the reimbursement form is used to indicate any risk issues with the reimbursement form.

[0008] In one possible implementation, the expense management system performs corresponding exception handling operations on the reimbursement form based on the label of the reimbursement form, including: when the label of the reimbursement form is added according to the label rule, the expense management system prompts the financial approver to approve the reimbursement form, or conducts random inspection of the reimbursement form.

[0009] Through this implementation, the expense management system can identify risky reimbursement forms and assign them to financial approvers for approval or conduct spot checks. This ensures the compliance of reimbursements.

[0010] In one possible implementation, the expense management system obtains a label for the reimbursement form, including: the expense management system receives a pre-voucher error message, the pre-voucher error message is used to indicate a pre-voucher error associated with the reimbursement form, and then adds a label to the reimbursement form based on the pre-voucher error message, where the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate a pre-voucher error associated with the reimbursement form.

[0011] In one possible implementation, the expense management system performs corresponding exception handling operations on the reimbursement form based on the label of the reimbursement form, including: when the label of the reimbursement form is added based on a pre-voucher error message, the expense management system modifies the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form based on the label of the reimbursement form.

[0012] Through the above implementation, the expense management system can identify errors in the pre-vouchers associated with the reimbursement form and modify the pre-vouchers associated with the reimbursement form accordingly, ensuring that the subsequent accounting vouchers can be quickly processed and improving the efficiency of expense reimbursement.

[0013] In one possible implementation, the expense management system obtains the label of the reimbursement form, including: the expense management system receives an add label operation, and then adds a label to the reimbursement form according to the above add label operation, where the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate that the reimbursement form is filled out incorrectly or the reimbursement form lacks reimbursement information.

[0014] In one possible implementation, the expense management system performs corresponding exception handling operations on the reimbursement form based on the label of the reimbursement form, including: when the label of the reimbursement form is added according to the add label operation, the expense management system prompts the reimbursement person of the reimbursement form to modify the reimbursement form, or add missing reimbursement information to the reimbursement form.

[0015] Through the above implementation, the expense management system can identify problems with incorrectly filled reimbursement forms or missing reimbursement information. Based on these problems, it can automatically prompt the reimbursement recipient to modify the reimbursement form or upload the missing reimbursement information, thereby improving the efficiency of expense reimbursement.

[0016] In a second aspect, the present application provides an expense management system. The system includes an acquisition module, a tag creation module, and a processing module. The acquisition module is configured to receive a request to process a reimbursement form. The tag creation module is configured to obtain a tag from the reimbursement form. The tag on the reimbursement form indicates any anomalies with the reimbursement form, including issues that affect the reimbursement amount. The processing module is configured to perform corresponding exception handling operations on the reimbursement form based on the tag.

[0017] In one possible implementation, the processing module is further configured to obtain a process template matching the reimbursement form and process the reimbursement form according to the reimbursement processing flow defined in the process template, wherein the process template includes a label generation step. The label creation module is configured to, when executing the label generation step in the process template, add a label to the reimbursement form according to the labeling rules corresponding to the label generation step. The label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate any risk issues associated with the reimbursement form.

[0018] In one possible implementation, the processing module is configured to prompt a financial approver to approve the reimbursement form or perform a random inspection of the reimbursement form when the reimbursement form's tag is added according to a tag rule.

[0019] In one possible implementation, the label creation module is used to receive a pre-voucher error message, which is used to indicate that a pre-voucher error is associated with the reimbursement form, and then add a label to the reimbursement form based on the pre-voucher error message, where the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate a pre-voucher error associated with the reimbursement form.

[0020] In one possible implementation, the processing module is configured to modify the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form according to the tag of the reimbursement form when the tag of the reimbursement form is added according to a pre-voucher error message.

[0021] In one possible implementation, the label creation module is used to receive a label adding operation, and then add a label to the reimbursement form according to the above label adding operation. Here, the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate that the reimbursement form is filled out incorrectly or the reimbursement form lacks reimbursement information.

[0022] In one possible implementation, the processing module is configured to prompt the reimbursement payer of the reimbursement form to modify the reimbursement form or add missing reimbursement information to the reimbursement form when the label of the reimbursement form is added according to the add label operation.

[0023] In a third aspect, the present application provides a computing device comprising a processor and a memory, wherein the processor is configured to execute instructions stored in the memory so that the computing device performs part or all of the method described in the first aspect and any implementation thereof.

[0024] In a fourth aspect, the present application provides a computer program product. This computer program product may be software or a program product containing instructions that can be run on a computing device or stored in any available medium. When this computer program product is run on a computing device, it causes the computing device to perform part or all of the method described in the first aspect and any implementation thereof.

[0025] In a fifth aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium comprising computer program instructions, which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform part or all of the method described in the first aspect and any one of its implementations. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0026] FIG1 is a schematic diagram of an expense management scenario provided by this application;

[0027] FIG2 is a flow chart of an expense reimbursement method provided by the present application;

[0028] FIG3 is a schematic diagram of a target process template provided by the present application;

[0029] FIG4 is a schematic diagram of the structure of a fee management system provided by the present application;

[0030] FIG5 is a schematic diagram of the structure of a computing device provided by the present application;

[0031] FIG6 is a schematic diagram of the structure of a computing device cluster provided by this application. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0032] In order to improve the efficiency of expense reimbursement and reduce the cost of expense reimbursement, the present application provides an expense reimbursement method, which can be applied to an expense management system. The expense management system determines whether there are any abnormal problems with the reimbursement form, and the type of abnormal problem when there are abnormal problems with the reimbursement form by adding labels to the reimbursement form. After that, for reimbursement forms that do not have abnormal problems, the reimbursement amount can be paid directly. For reimbursement forms that have abnormal problems, the corresponding processing flow can be executed on the reimbursement form according to the label of the reimbursement form. Therefore, through the expense reimbursement method provided by this application, the expense management system can automatically complete the reimbursement of a part of the reimbursement forms, which can not only improve the efficiency of expense reimbursement, but also reduce the workload of manually processing reimbursement forms, thereby reducing the cost of expense reimbursement.

[0033] The technical solution provided by this application is described below in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

[0034] This application is mainly aimed at improving the implementation method of expense management functions (including expense reimbursement, receivables, payables, etc.). Expense management refers to the process of managing expenses applied for by users. For example, in enterprise management and operations, when an enterprise employee submits an expense reimbursement form to the expense management system to apply for reimbursement of a certain expense (such as travel expenses, mobile phone charges, social entertainment expenses, etc.), the expense management system will notify the employee's business supervisor and accountant to review and approve the reimbursement form in turn, and after approval, pay the employee the corresponding expenses, thereby completing the expense reimbursement process. For another example, an enterprise employee can also submit an expense application form to the expense management system for a certain receivable expense (or payable expense). After the expense management system obtains the above-mentioned expense application form, it will notify the employee's business supervisor and accountant to review and approve the expense application form in turn, and after approval, track and manage accounts receivable (or payables to suppliers), thereby completing the processing process of receivable expenses (or payable expenses).

[0035] Please refer to Figure 1. Figure 1 takes the reimbursement of corporate employees as an example to exemplify a schematic diagram of an expense management scenario to which this application is applicable. It should be understood that in actual applications, the technical solution provided by this application can also be applied to other expense management scenarios, such as the above-mentioned receivables or payables scenarios, etc., and this application does not make specific limitations on this. As shown in Figure 1, the scenario includes an expense management system 100, a client 200, and a client 300, wherein the expense management system 100 is connected to the client 200 and the client 300 respectively via a network, and the network can be a wide area network or a local area network.

[0036] In the expense management scenario shown in FIG1 , when an enterprise employee (hereinafter referred to as the reimburser) needs to claim reimbursement for a certain expense (e.g., travel expenses, mobile phone charges, social entertainment expenses, etc.), the reimburser can submit a reimbursement form (e.g., the travel expense reimbursement form, mobile phone charge reimbursement form, and social entertainment expense reimbursement form in the figure) to the expense management system 100 through the client 200. Accordingly, the expense management system 100 receives the reimbursement form sent by the client 200 and determines the corresponding business processing flow based on the type of reimbursement form. For example, a travel expense reimbursement form corresponds to business processing flow A, a mobile phone charge reimbursement form corresponds to business processing flow B, and a social entertainment expense reimbursement form corresponds to business processing flow C. Afterwards, the expense management system 100 processes the reimbursement form according to the business processing flow. After the business processing is completed, it adds a tag to the reimbursement form and then determines the financial processing flow of the reimbursement form based on the tag of the reimbursement form. If the reimbursement form does not have any abnormal issues, the expense management system 100 directly pays the reimbursement amount to the reimbursement recipient. If the reimbursement form has an abnormal issue, the expense management system 100 performs additional financial processes on the reimbursement form. The additional financial processes include: prompting the financial approver to approve the reimbursement form through the client 300, performing random inspections on the reimbursement form, modifying the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form, and prompting the reimbursement recipient through the client 200 to modify the reimbursement form or upload missing reimbursement information. After executing the additional financial processes on the reimbursement form, the expense management system 100 determines whether to pay the reimbursement amount to the reimbursement recipient based on the processing results.

[0037] In a specific implementation, the expense management system 100 can be a software system deployed on a single computing device or a computing device cluster consisting of multiple computing devices, wherein the above-mentioned computing device can be a terminal server or a computing device in a data center (for example, a server, a virtual machine, a container, etc.). The client 200 and the client 300 can be software or applications deployed on a terminal device, for example, a web client, wherein the above-mentioned terminal device includes, for example, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a smart phone, a wearable device, etc. It should be understood that this embodiment does not limit the number of clients 200 and clients 300 in the above-mentioned expense management scenario, that is, the number of clients 200 and clients 300 can be one or more. For the sake of simplicity, Figure 1 takes one client 200 and one client 300 as an example for illustration.

[0038] Next, the process of implementing expense reimbursement by the expense management system 100 will be described in detail with reference to the flowchart of the expense reimbursement method shown in FIG2 .

[0039] Step 101: The client 200 sends a reimbursement form to the expense management system 100. Accordingly, the expense management system 100 receives the reimbursement form.

[0040] Among them, the reimbursement form is a document used to record and request expense reimbursement. The reimbursement form may include any one or more of the following: information of the person making the reimbursement (for example, the name, work number, company and department of the person making the reimbursement, etc.), expense details (for example, the time, place, reason, amount and currency corresponding to the amount of the expense), bills (for example, invoices, receipts, etc.), information proving the rationality and compliance of the expense expenditure (for example, a business trip notice should be provided when reimbursing travel expenses). It should be understood that the above information is only an illustrative description of what the reimbursement form may include. In actual applications, the reimbursement form may also include other content, which is not specifically limited in this embodiment.

[0041] Specifically, the reimbursement claimant logs into the expense management system 100 through the client 200 and based on an account number (e.g., the reimbursement claimant's work number). The expense management system 100 determines the reimbursement claimant's company and / or office area based on the above account number, and then determines multiple available reimbursement form types, such as travel expense reimbursement forms, mobile phone expense reimbursement forms, social entertainment expense reimbursement forms, etc. Afterwards, the expense management system 100 displays the above multiple available reimbursement form types to the reimbursement claimant through the client 200, so that the reimbursement claimant can select the appropriate reimbursement form type according to the actual reimbursement scenario. For example, when the reimbursement claimant needs to reimburse travel expenses, they can select a travel expense reimbursement form. In response to the reimbursement form type selected by the reimbursement claimant, the expense management system 100 displays the corresponding reimbursement form template to the reimbursement claimant through the client 200, so that the reimbursement claimant can fill in relevant information on the reimbursement form template to obtain the reimbursement form. Afterwards, the person requesting reimbursement submits the completed reimbursement form to the expense management system 100 through the client 200 . Correspondingly, the expense management system 100 receives the reimbursement form sent by the client 200 .

[0042] Step 102: The client 200 sends a request for processing the expense report to the expense management system 100. Accordingly, the expense management system 100 receives the request for processing the expense report.

[0043] Specifically, the expense management system 100 supports the reimbursement recipient to review and verify the expense report. Once the reimbursement recipient confirms the report is correct, the recipient can send a request to process the report to the expense management system 100 via the client 200. In response, the expense management system 100 receives the request, which instructs the expense management system 100 to process the report to complete the expense reimbursement process.

[0044] It should be understood that in actual applications, the person making the reimbursement may find that there are errors in the reimbursement form after checking it. In this case, the person making the reimbursement can also modify the reimbursement form in the expense management system 100 through the client 200, and after the modification, send a processing request for the reimbursement form to the expense management system 100 through the client 200.

[0045] Step 103: The expense management system 100 obtains a process template that matches the reimbursement form (hereinafter referred to as the "target process template").

[0046] The expense management system 100 pre-stores multiple process templates, including a target process template. Each of the multiple process templates is used to define a reimbursement processing flow. A reimbursement processing flow is used to process expenses incurred in a certain reimbursement scenario. In other words, different process templates are required for reimbursement of expenses incurred in different reimbursement scenarios. For example, travel expense reimbursement and social entertainment expense reimbursement are two different reimbursement scenarios. Therefore, two process templates can be set to process travel expense reimbursement and social entertainment expense reimbursement, respectively.

[0047] The expense management system 100 also stores the association between each process template and the enterprise registration information. The enterprise registration information refers to the information provided to the expense management system 100 by the enterprise's administrator user. Specifically, it may include one or more of the following: the identifiers of one or more companies owned by the enterprise (e.g., the company name), the identifiers of office areas (e.g., the names of office areas), and the types of reimbursement forms. The types of reimbursement forms correspond to the reimbursement scenarios. The same type of reimbursement scenarios correspond to the same type of reimbursement forms, while different types of reimbursement scenarios correspond to different types of reimbursement forms.

[0048] Specifically, the expense management system 100 can obtain the target process template in the following manner: the expense management system 100 obtains one or more of the registration information of the reimbursement person, such as the company, office area, type of reimbursement form, etc., and then determines the target process template from the above multiple process templates based on the above-mentioned information obtained and the association between each locally stored process template and the enterprise registration information.

[0049] Taking the company, office area, and type of reimbursement form of the reimbursement person as an example, the expense management system 100 can obtain the reimbursement person's registration information in the following manner: Since the reimbursement person needs to log in to the expense management system 100 before filling out the reimbursement form, the expense management system 100 can determine the user identifier associated with the reimbursement form based on the login account of the reimbursement person, and then determine the company and office area of ​​the reimbursement person based on the user identifier associated with the reimbursement form, wherein the user identifier is used to indicate the reimbursement person, and can specifically be the reimbursement person's work number or a customized user account, etc. The type of reimbursement form can be specified by the reimbursement person, that is, the reimbursement person can determine the appropriate type of reimbursement form based on the actual reimbursement scenario. It should be understood that in actual applications, the expense management system 100 can also obtain the reimbursement person's registration information of the company, office area, and type of reimbursement form of the reimbursement person through other methods, and this embodiment does not specifically limit this.

[0050] In some embodiments, the multiple process templates in the expense management system 100 can be created by the system's developers or the enterprise's administrator users based on the enterprise's business management requirements (e.g., the enterprise's reimbursement management system). Taking the creation of a process template for travel expense reimbursement as an example, the expense management system 100 provides a process template creation interface on which the user can create an empty process template. Then, based on the enterprise's requirements for travel expense reimbursement (e.g., office area N under company M can use this template for travel expense reimbursement), process links and the relationship between process links are added to the above empty process template, and attributes are configured for each process link (e.g., the business supervisor and approval task in the business supervisor approval link, etc.), thereby obtaining a process template. Afterwards, the expense management system 100 stores the process template and the association between the process template and company M, office area N, and the type of reimbursement form (i.e., travel expense reimbursement), thereby completing the creation of the process template for travel expense reimbursement. It should be understood that in actual applications, the expense management system 100 can adopt the existing process template creation method in the industry, for example, the business process model and notation (BPMN) to implement the creation process of the above-mentioned travel expense reimbursement process template, and this embodiment does not make specific limitations on this.

[0051] Step 104 : The expense management system 100 processes the reimbursement form according to the reimbursement processing flow defined by the target flow template.

[0052] Specifically, the target process template includes multiple operation links and the relationships between the multiple operation links. Each of the multiple operation links is a specific operational step in the reimbursement processing flow, and the relationships between the multiple operation links indicate the order in which the multiple operation links are executed. Therefore, the expense management system 100 can perform corresponding processing operations on the reimbursement form based on the multiple operation links and the relationships between the multiple operation links in the target process template.

[0053] The multiple operational steps in the target process template may include any one or more of the following: process start, process end, business manager approval, label generation, pre-voucher push, invoice original archiving, gateway, to-do creation, and payment. The process start begins the reimbursement process. The process end concludes the reimbursement process. The business manager approval step prompts the business manager to approve the reimbursement form. The label generation step tags the reimbursement form according to the label rules and processes the reimbursement form based on the reimbursement form's label. The pre-voucher push step instructs the financial management system connected to the expense management system 100 to generate a pre-voucher for the reimbursement form and processes the reimbursement form based on the pre-voucher message (e.g., a pre-voucher error message) fed back by the financial management system. The invoice original archiving step prompts the reimbursement claimant to mail the invoice original and prompts the accountant to archive the invoice original. The gateway step controls the execution flow of the reimbursement process. For example, if the invoice original archiving is not required, the invoice original archiving step can be skipped based on the gateway step. The creation of a to-do link is to create a to-do item and display the to-do item to the financial approver, wherein the to-do item refers to matters generated during the execution of the reimbursement processing flow and need to be handled by the financial approver, for example, matters requiring financial approval of the reimbursement form. The payment link is to pay the reimbursement amount to the reimburser. It should be understood that in actual applications, in addition to the operation links listed above, the target process template may also include other operation links, which are not specifically limited in this embodiment. In addition, the target process template may also include the relationship between multiple operation links, such as the execution order and execution conditions between multiple operation links. It should also be understood that, similar to the target process template, other process templates may also include multiple operation links such as the process start link, the process end link, the business approval link, and the relationship between each operation link, which are not described in detail in this embodiment for simplicity.

[0054] For example, Figure 3 shows a schematic diagram of a possible target process template. As shown in Figure 3, the target process template includes a process start phase, a business manager approval phase, a tag generation phase, a pre-voucher push phase, a payment phase, and a process end phase. Based on the reimbursement processing process defined in this template, the expense management system 100 first executes the process start phase to begin the reimbursement process for the reimbursement form. Then, the expense management system 100 executes the business manager approval phase to assign the reimbursement form to the reimbursement recipient's business manager for approval (i.e., business approval processing). After the reimbursement form passes business approval, the expense management system 100 executes the tag generation phase to add tags to the reimbursement form according to tagging rules and performs corresponding processing on the reimbursement form based on the tag (e.g., prompting the financial approver to approve the reimbursement form through the client 300). Next, the expense management system 100 executes the pre-voucher push phase to process the reimbursement form based on the pre-voucher message (e.g., modifying the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form based on the pre-voucher error message). Afterward, the expense management system 100 executes the payment phase to pay the reimbursement amount to the reimbursement recipient. Finally, the expense management system 100 executes the process end link to end the expense reimbursement.

[0055] Step 105: The expense management system 100 obtains the label of the reimbursement form.

[0056] Specifically, the expense management system 100 may obtain the label of the expense report in any one or more of the following ways:

[0057] Method 1: When executing the label generation step in the target process template, the expense management system 100 adds labels to the expense report according to the label rules corresponding to the label generation step.

[0058] Specifically, a labeling rule includes a determination condition and a corresponding label when the determination condition is met. Therefore, when executing the label generation step in the target process template, the expense management system 100 obtains the labeling rule corresponding to the label generation step and then determines whether the reimbursement form meets the determination condition. If the reimbursement form meets the determination condition, the reimbursement form is labeled accordingly. The label of this reimbursement form is used to indicate the risk issues existing in the reimbursement form. The label of the reimbursement form can be represented by text, letters, or symbols, and this embodiment does not specifically limit this.

[0059] In some embodiments, the expense management system 100 can determine whether the reimbursement form meets the judgment condition in the following manner: the expense management system 100 determines the target field in the reimbursement form, and then determines whether the target field meets the judgment condition, wherein when the target field meets the judgment condition, it means that the reimbursement form meets the judgment condition. The target field is determined by the expense management system 100 based on the field required for the judgment condition. For example, if the judgment condition is that the reimbursement amount is greater than the first amount, the target field is the reimbursement amount in the reimbursement form. In a specific implementation, when the reimbursement form is an electronic document, the expense management system 100 can determine the target field by parsing the electronic document. When the reimbursement form includes a picture, the expense management system 100 can use an optical character recognition model to process the above picture to obtain the target field.

[0060] In addition to the above methods, the expense management system 100 can also directly input the expense report into the label generation model and add labels to the expense report based on the label generation model. The label generation model includes labeling rules. The label generation model can be an artificial intelligence (AI) model trained using multiple training samples, where the multiple training samples include multiple expense report samples and labels for each expense report sample.

[0061] Illustratively, tagging rules include risk control rules and / or non-risk control rules. Risk control rules are used to determine whether a reimbursement form contains potential risks. Tables 1 and 2 list several possible risk control rules and non-risk control rules, respectively.

[0062] Table 1. Risk control rules

[0063] Table 2. Non-risk control rules

[0064] It should be understood that in actual applications, in addition to the rules listed in Tables 1 and 2, risk control rules and non-risk control rules may also include other rules, which are not specifically limited in this embodiment. For example, non-risk control rules may also include: a judgment condition such as "the original invoice of the expense report does not need to be filed" and a label such as "no need to file the original invoice."

[0065] It should also be understood that the labeling rules in this embodiment may include rules obtained by the expense management system 100 from a third-party anomaly verification system (for example, a third-party risk control system), or may include rules pre-stored in the expense management system 100. The labeling rules stored in the expense management system 100 may be configured by the developer of the system or the administrator user of the enterprise according to the enterprise's reimbursement management system, or may be dynamically configured by the expense management system 100 according to actual conditions.

[0066] Method 2: The expense management system 100 receives the pre-voucher error message and adds a tag to the reimbursement form according to the pre-voucher error message.

[0067] Specifically, the expense management system 100 is connected to the financial management system of the enterprise. When the expense management system 100 executes the pre-voucher push link in the target process template, the expense management system 100 notifies the financial management system to generate a pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form. Accordingly, the financial management system generates a pre-voucher based on the reimbursement form and determines whether the pre-voucher is wrong. If the pre-voucher is wrong, the financial management system sends a pre-voucher error message to the expense management system 100, wherein the pre-voucher error message includes an exception code, and the exception code is used to indicate the specific circumstances of the pre-voucher error. Accordingly, the expense management system 100 receives the pre-voucher error message, obtains the exception code by parsing the message, and then generates a label based on the exception code, and adds the above-generated label to the reimbursement form, where the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate the pre-voucher error associated with the reimbursement form.

[0068] A pre-voucher refers to a record or document prepared before generating an accounting voucher. It is a temporary voucher used to record future financial transactions to ensure that the anticipated financial transactions are properly recorded and tracked. A pre-voucher may include one or more of the following: cost center information, expense account information, information about the accountant responsible for processing the pre-voucher (e.g., accountant ID), transaction date, transaction amount, account information, voucher number, etc. Cost center information is used to track and allocate costs for the anticipated financial transaction. Cost center information includes, for example, the cost center number, cost center name, and cost center manager. Expense account information is used to track and record the account of the costs for the anticipated financial transaction. Expense account information includes, for example, the expense account number and expense account name. Transaction date refers to the date of the anticipated financial transaction. Transaction amount refers to the anticipated amount of the transaction. Account information refers to the account information of both parties to the transaction, such as the account name. The voucher number is a unique identifier for the pre-voucher and is used for subsequent management and tracking of the pre-voucher. A pre-voucher error occurs when one or more of the information included in the pre-voucher is incorrect. Table 3 lists several possible pre-voucher error scenarios and their corresponding labels.

[0069] Table 3. Pre-credential errors and their corresponding labels

[0070] It should be understood that in actual applications, in addition to the pre-credential errors and their corresponding labels listed in Table 3, there may also be other pre-credential error situations and their corresponding labels, which are not specifically limited in this embodiment.

[0071] Method 3: The expense management system 100 receives the tagging operation and adds tags to the expense report according to the tagging operation.

[0072] Specifically, during the expense reimbursement process, the expense management system 100 will prompt the expense approver through the client 300 to approve the reimbursement form to ensure the rationality and compliance of the expenses to be reimbursed. If the expense approver finds that the reimbursement form is abnormal, the expense approver can send a tagging operation to the expense management system 100 through the client 300. Accordingly, the expense management system 100 receives the above-mentioned tagging operation and adds a corresponding tag to the reimbursement form according to the above-mentioned tagging operation. Here, the tag of the reimbursement form is used to indicate that the reimbursement form is filled out incorrectly or the reimbursement form is missing reimbursement information. It should be noted that the above-mentioned expense approver can be a business approver (for example, a business supervisor) or a financial approver (for example, an accountant).

[0073] Exemplarily, the expense management system 100 supports the reimbursement person to view the processing progress of the reimbursement form. Then, after the reimbursement person submits the reimbursement form, if it is found that the reimbursement form is filled out incorrectly (for example, the reimbursement amount is filled out incorrectly, or the type of reimbursement form is selected incorrectly), the reimbursement person can apply to the expense management system 100 through the client 200 to view the processing progress of the reimbursement form, so that the reimbursement person can determine that the current expense approver is the accountant S. Afterwards, the reimbursement person can feedback the problems with the reimbursement form to the accountant S. Accordingly, the accountant S will send a tagging operation to the expense management system 100 through the client 300, and the expense management system 100 will add a corresponding tag to the reimbursement form according to the above tagging operation. The tag is used to indicate that the reimbursement form is filled out incorrectly (for example, the reimbursement amount in the above example is filled out incorrectly, or the type of reimbursement form is selected incorrectly).

[0074] For another example, if a business approver discovers during the approval process that a reimbursement form is missing key information (e.g., a travel expense claim is missing the air tickets in the itinerary), the business approver can send a tagging operation to the expense management system 100 through the local client. Accordingly, the expense management system 100 receives the tagging operation and, based on the tagging operation, adds a tag to the reimbursement form. The tag is used to indicate that the reimbursement form is missing reimbursement information (e.g., the air tickets in the itinerary are missing in the example above).

[0075] It should be understood that in actual applications, in addition to the examples listed above, the expense approver can also add tags to the reimbursement form based on other issues that arise in the reimbursement form, and this embodiment does not specifically limit this.

[0076] Step 106: The expense management system 100 performs corresponding exception handling operations on the reimbursement form according to the label of the reimbursement form.

[0077] As can be seen from the above step 105, the labels of the reimbursement form may include any one or more of the labels added according to the labeling rules, the labels added according to the pre-voucher error message, and the labels added according to the labeling operation. Different labels are used to indicate different abnormal problems with the reimbursement form, and accordingly, different abnormal handling operations need to be performed on the reimbursement form. Among them, the abnormal problems with the reimbursement form refer to problems that affect the direct payment reimbursement amount, for example, risk problems with the reimbursement form, errors in the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form, errors in filling out the reimbursement form, and missing reimbursement information on the reimbursement form.

[0078] Specifically, when the label of the reimbursement form is added according to the label rule (that is, the label is used to indicate that there is a risk problem with the reimbursement form), the expense management system 100 can prompt the financial approver to approve the reimbursement form (that is, financial approval processing), or perform random inspection on the reimbursement form. Among them, "financial approval processing" refers to the approval of the compliance of the reimbursement form, and after the reimbursement form passes the financial approval, the reimbursement amount is paid to the reimbursement person. "Random inspection processing" includes two methods: "random inspection before payment" and "random inspection after payment". "Random inspection before payment" means first adding the reimbursement form to the random inspection form set, and then screening out some reimbursement forms from the random inspection form set for financial approval processing, wherein the random inspection form set also includes other reimbursement forms. "Random inspection after payment" means first paying the reimbursement amount to the reimbursement person, and then adding the reimbursed reimbursement form to the random inspection form set, and then screening out some reimbursement forms from the random inspection form set for financial approval processing. If a reimbursement form's tag is added based on a pre-voucher error message (i.e., the tag indicates an error in the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form), the expense management system 100 modifies the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form based on the tag. If a reimbursement form's tag is added based on a tagging operation (i.e., the tag indicates an error in the reimbursement form or missing reimbursement information), the expense management system 100 prompts the reimbursement requester to modify the reimbursement form or add the missing reimbursement information to the reimbursement form.

[0079] For example, this step will be further described by taking the label of the expense report listed in step 105 as an example. The corresponding relationship between the label of the expense report and the exception handling operation is shown in Table 4.

[0080] Table 4. Reimbursement form labels and their corresponding exception handling operations

[0081] For ease of understanding, the following is an explanation of the contents of Table 4:

[0082] (1) When the reimbursement form is labeled as a duplicate invoice, a large amount reimbursement, an over-the-counter reimbursement, an overdue reimbursement, or the reimbursement form lacks an invoice, the expense management system 100 can prompt the financial approver to approve the reimbursement form through the client 300 (i.e., financial approval processing). If the reimbursement form passes the financial approval, the expense management system 100 can pay the reimbursement amount to the reimbursement person; if the reimbursement form fails the financial approval, the expense management system 100 can perform corresponding operations based on the reason for the failure of the financial approval (e.g., deducting the reimbursement person's reserve fund).

[0083] (2) When the label of the reimbursement form is a sensitive word, the invoice is non-compliant or it is a VIP form, the expense management system 100 can perform random inspections on the reimbursement form. In a specific implementation, for this type of reimbursement form, the expense management system 100 can first pay the reimbursement amount to the reimbursement person after the business processing flow is completed, and add the reimbursement form to the random inspection form collection. After a period of time, the expense management system 100 selects some reimbursement forms from the random inspection form collection for financial approval. If the reimbursement form that is randomly inspected passes the financial approval, the expense management system 100 confirms that the reimbursed amount is correct; if the reimbursement form that is randomly inspected fails to pass the financial approval process, the expense management system 100 can prompt the reimbursement person through the client 200 that the reimbursement form is incorrect, and perform corresponding operations based on the reason for failing to pass the financial approval process (for example, deducting the reimbursement person's reserve fund).

[0084] (3) When the label of the reimbursement form indicates that the cost center is invalid, the accounting work number is invalid, or the expense account is invalid, the expense management system 100 can modify the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form, wherein the modified pre-voucher is the correct pre-voucher and can be used to generate an accounting voucher. In a specific implementation, the expense management system 100 can modify the pre-voucher associated with the reimbursement form based on the label of the reimbursement form. For example, if the label of the reimbursement form indicates that the expense account of the pre-voucher is invalid, the expense management system 100 can modify the expense account information in the pre-voucher, or determine the accountant responsible for the pre-voucher and prompt the accountant to modify the above-mentioned pre-voucher.

[0085] (4) When the label of the reimbursement form indicates that the reimbursement form is incorrectly filled out, the expense management system 100 can prompt the reimbursement payer to modify the reimbursement form through the client 200. Furthermore, the reimbursement payer can submit the modified reimbursement form to the expense management system 100 through the client 200, so that the expense management system 100 can process the modified reimbursement form accordingly.

[0086] (5) When the reimbursement form is labeled as missing reimbursement information, the expense management system 100 can prompt the reimbursement person to upload the missing reimbursement information through the client 200, so that the expense management system 100 can continue to process the reimbursement form.

[0087] It should be understood that Table 4 merely illustrates several possible expense report tags and their corresponding processing methods. In practice, expense reports may have other tags, and accordingly, the expense management system 100 may handle them differently. This embodiment does not impose any specific limitations on this. For example, if the target process template includes an invoice original filing step, and the expense report tag is "No invoice original filing required," the expense management system 100 may skip the invoice original filing step when executing the reimbursement process.

[0088] In actual applications, there may be situations where the reimbursement form does not have a label, that is, there is no abnormality in the reimbursement form. In this case, the expense management system 100 can pay the reimbursement amount directly to the person making the reimbursement after the reimbursement form passes the business processing flow, so that the person making the reimbursement can quickly obtain the reimbursed expenses, thereby improving the efficiency of expense reimbursement.

[0089] In the expense reimbursement process described in steps 101 to 106 above, after the expense management system 100 obtains the reimbursement form submitted by the reimbursement person, it determines whether there are any abnormal problems with the reimbursement form from multiple dimensions (including risk control rules, non-risk control rules, pre-vouchers associated with the reimbursement form, expense approvers, etc.) by adding labels to the reimbursement form. If there are no abnormal problems with the reimbursement form, the reimbursement amount can be paid directly to the reimbursement person after the business processing flow is completed. If there are abnormal problems with the reimbursement form, the corresponding abnormal processing operation can be performed on the reimbursement form based on the label of the reimbursement form. For example, when the label of the reimbursement form indicates that the reimbursement form is filled out incorrectly, the expense management system 100 prompts the reimbursement person to modify the reimbursement form. For another example, when the label of the reimbursement form indicates that there are risk problems with the reimbursement form, the expense management system 100 prompts the financial approver to approve the reimbursement form or conduct a random inspection of the reimbursement form. Therefore, through the expense reimbursement method provided by the present application, there is no need for the financial approver to manually approve and process all reimbursement forms, which not only improves the efficiency of expense reimbursement, but also reduces the workload of the financial approver and reduces the cost of expense reimbursement. In addition, since the expense reimbursement method provided by the present application can add different labels to the reimbursement form in combination with the actual reimbursement situation, for the reimbursement of expenses incurred in a certain scenario, configuring a process template can realize the use of different reimbursement processing processes in different reimbursement situations, thereby reducing the configuration of process templates and reducing the cost of expense reimbursement. For example, the expense management system 100 can configure a process template for the reimbursement of travel expenses. Although there may be many situations for the reimbursement of travel expenses, such as large-amount reimbursement and overdue reimbursement, for different situations, different reimbursement processing processes can be used to achieve the reimbursement of travel expenses by adding different labels to the reimbursement form.

[0090] In addition, considering that business management requirements may change during the course of business development, the reimbursement processing flow for expenses generated by the business also needs to be changed accordingly. Therefore, optionally, the expense management system 100 can also support the developer of the system or the administrator user of the enterprise to modify the target process template, and the new target process template is adapted to the new business management requirements. In a specific implementation, the expense management system 100 receives a modification operation of the target process template, for example, deleting or adding a process link, or adjusting the execution order of two process links. Then, the expense management system 100 modifies the target process template according to the above-mentioned modification operation to obtain a new target process template, and then replaces the original target process template with the new target process template, so that subsequent reimbursement forms of the same type can use the new target process template to implement the expense reimbursement process.

[0091] It should be noted that, for the sake of simplicity, this application only describes in detail how the expense management system 100 implements the expense reimbursement process. For other expense management scenarios (for example, accounts receivable or payable), the expense management system 100 can also adopt a similar idea to implement expense management. The specific implementation process can refer to the above steps 101 to 106, which will not be described in detail here.

[0092] The expense reimbursement method provided in the present application is described in detail above with reference to FIG. 1 to FIG. 3 . The expense management system 100 for executing the above expense reimbursement method will be described below with reference to FIG. 4 .

[0093] Figure 4 illustrates a schematic diagram of the structure of the expense management system 100. It should be understood that Figure 4 illustrates only one exemplary division of the structure of the expense management system 100. In actual applications, the structure of the expense management system 100 may be divided in other ways, which are not specifically limited in this embodiment. As shown in Figure 3, the expense management system 100 includes an acquisition module 101, a label creation module 102, and a processing module 103. Optionally, the expense management system 100 also includes a process template management module 104. The acquisition module 101, label creation module 102, processing module 103, and process template management module 104 work together to implement the steps performed by the expense management system 100 in the expense reimbursement method described above. Specifically, the acquisition module 101 is responsible for executing the steps performed by the expense management system 100 in steps 101 and 102. The label creation module 102 is responsible for executing step 105. The processing module 103 is responsible for executing steps 103, 104, and 106. The process template management module 104 is responsible for executing the steps of creating, storing, and updating process templates.

[0094] It should be understood that the expense management system 100 provided by the present invention can be implemented by a central processing unit (CPU), or by an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or by a programmable logic device (PLD), wherein the PLD can be a complex programmable logical device (CPLD), a field programmable gate array (FPGA), a generic array logic (GAL), a data processing unit (DPU), a system on chip (SoC), or any combination thereof. When the expense reimbursement method shown in FIG. 2 can also be implemented by software, the expense management system 100 and its various modules can also be software modules.

[0095] The present application also provides a computing device. The computing device can be a terminal server or a computing device in a data center. FIG5 exemplarily shows a schematic diagram of the structure of the computing device provided by the present application. As shown in FIG5 , the computing device 400 includes a bus 401, a processor 402, a memory 403, and a communication interface 404, and the processor 402, the memory 403, and the communication interface 404 communicate with each other via the bus 401.

[0096] Bus 401 may be a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus or an Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) bus, among others. Buses may be classified as address buses, data buses, control buses, and the like. For ease of illustration, FIG5 shows only one bus, but this does not imply that computing device 400 has only one bus or only one type of bus. Bus 401 may include a path for transmitting information between various components of computing device 400 (e.g., processor 402, memory 403, and communication interface 404).

[0097] The processor 402 may include any one or more computing units with computing capabilities, such as a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), a microprocessor (MP) or a digital signal processor (DSP), a data processing unit (DPU), a system on chip (SoC), an offload card, an accelerator card, etc.

[0098] The memory 403 may include a volatile memory, such as a random access memory (RAM). The memory 403 may also include a non-volatile memory, such as a read-only memory (ROM), a flash memory, a hard disk drive (HDD), or a solid state drive (SSD).

[0099] Memory 403 stores executable code. Processor 402 executes the code stored in memory 403 to implement the functions of acquisition module 101, label creation module 102, processing module 103, and process template management module 104, thereby implementing the expense reimbursement method. In other words, memory 403 stores instructions for executing the expense reimbursement method.

[0100] The communication interface 404 uses a transceiver module such as, but not limited to, a network interface card or a transceiver to implement communication between the computing device 400 and other devices or a communication network. For example, the computing device 400 communicates with the client 200 and the client 300 through the communication interface 404 .

[0101] It should be understood that the computing device 400 provided according to the present application may correspond to the expense management system 100 in the present application, and may correspond to the expense management system 100 that executes the method shown in Figure 2 provided according to the present application, and the above-mentioned and other operations and / or functions of each module in the computing device 400 are respectively for implementing the corresponding processes of each method in Figure 2. For the sake of brevity, they will not be repeated here.

[0102] The present application also provides a computing device cluster. The computing device cluster includes multiple computing devices, and the multiple computing devices in the computing device cluster may include one or more of terminal servers or computing devices in a data center. Figure 6 exemplarily shows a structural diagram of the computing device cluster provided by the present application. As shown in Figure 6, the computing device cluster 500 includes multiple computing devices 400, wherein the multiple computing devices 400 can be connected via a network (e.g., a wide area network or a local area network, etc.).

[0103] In some embodiments, the memory 403 of each computing device 400 in the computing device cluster 500 may respectively store partial instructions for executing the above-mentioned expense reimbursement method, so that the computing device cluster 500 executes the above-mentioned expense reimbursement method. In other words, the instructions stored in the memory 403 of each computing device 400 in the computing device cluster 500 can implement the functions of one or more modules among the above-mentioned acquisition module 101, label creation module 102, processing module 103 and process template management module 104. In a specific implementation, the memory 403 of different computing devices 400 in the computing device cluster 500 may store different instructions, or the memory 403 of some computing devices 400 in the computing device cluster 500 may also store the same instructions. For example, some computing devices 400 all store instructions for implementing the functions of the processing module 103.

[0104] It should be understood that the computing device cluster 500 provided in the present application may correspond to the expense management system 100 in the present application, and may correspond to the expense management system 100 in the method shown in Figure 2 provided in the present application, and the above-mentioned and other operations and / or functions of each module in the computing device cluster 500 are respectively for implementing the corresponding processes of each method in Figure 2. For the sake of brevity, they will not be repeated here.

[0105] The present application also provides a computer program product containing instructions. This computer program product can be software or a program product containing instructions that can be run on one or more computing devices or stored in any available medium. When this computer program product is run on a single computing device or a cluster of computing devices, it causes the single computing device or cluster of computing devices to perform the expense reimbursement method described above.

[0106] The above content can be implemented in whole or in part by software, hardware, firmware or any other combination. When implemented using software, the above embodiments can be implemented in whole or in part in the form of a computer program product. The computer program product includes one or more computer instructions. When the computer program instructions are loaded or executed on a computer, the process or function described in the embodiment of the present application of the present invention is generated in whole or in part. The computer can be a general-purpose computer, a special-purpose computer, a computer network, or other programmable device. The computer instructions can be stored in a computer-readable storage medium or transmitted from one computer-readable storage medium to another computer-readable storage medium. For example, the computer instructions can be transmitted from one website, computer, server or data center to another website, computer, server or data center via a wired (e.g., coaxial cable, optical fiber, digital subscriber line (DSL)) or wireless (e.g., infrared, wireless, microwave, etc.) method. The computer-readable storage medium can be any available medium that a computer can access or a data storage device such as a server or data center that contains one or more available media sets. The available medium can be a magnetic medium (e.g., a floppy disk, a hard disk, a tape), an optical medium (e.g., a DVD), or a semiconductor medium. The semiconductor medium can be a solid state disk (SSD).

[0107] Finally, it should be noted that the above embodiments are intended only to illustrate the technical solutions of this application and are not intended to limit them. Although this application has been described in detail with reference to the above embodiments, those skilled in the art should understand that they may modify the technical solutions described in the above embodiments or replace some of the technical features therein with equivalents; and such modifications or replacements do not deviate from the scope of protection of the technical solutions of the embodiments of this application.

Claims

1. An expense reimbursement method, applied to an expense management system, characterized in that: The method comprises: Receive processing requests for expense reports; Obtaining a label of the reimbursement form, where the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate an abnormal problem existing in the reimbursement form, where the abnormal problem existing in the reimbursement form includes a problem affecting a direct payment reimbursement amount; According to the label of the reimbursement form, a corresponding exception handling operation is performed on the reimbursement form.

2. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that: Before obtaining the label of the expense report, the method further includes: Acquire a process template matching the reimbursement form, and process the reimbursement form according to the reimbursement processing process defined by the process template, wherein the process template includes a label generation step; The step of obtaining the label of the reimbursement form includes: When the label generation step in the process template is executed, a label is added to the reimbursement form according to the label rule corresponding to the label generation step, and the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate the risk issues existing in the reimbursement form.

3. The method according to claim 2, characterized in that The performing corresponding exception handling operations on the reimbursement form according to the label of the reimbursement form includes: When the label of the reimbursement form is added according to the label rule, the financial approver is prompted to approve the reimbursement form, or to perform a random inspection on the reimbursement form.

4. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that The step of obtaining the label of the reimbursement form includes: receiving a pre-voucher error message, the pre-voucher error message being used to indicate a pre-voucher error associated with the reimbursement form; A label is added to the reimbursement form according to the pre-voucher error message, and the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate the pre-voucher error associated with the reimbursement form.

5. The method according to claim 4, characterized in that The performing corresponding exception handling operations on the reimbursement form according to the label of the reimbursement form includes: When the tag of the reimbursement form is added according to the pre-voucher error message, the pre-voucher is modified according to the tag of the reimbursement form.

6. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that The step of obtaining the label of the reimbursement form includes: Receive the tag adding operation; A label is added to the reimbursement form according to the label adding operation, and the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate that the reimbursement form is filled out incorrectly or the reimbursement form lacks reimbursement information.

7. The method according to claim 6, characterized in that The performing corresponding exception handling operations on the reimbursement form according to the label of the reimbursement form includes: When the tag of the reimbursement form is added according to the tag adding operation, the person who makes the reimbursement of the reimbursement form is prompted to modify the reimbursement form, or to add the missing reimbursement information to the reimbursement form.

8. An expense management system, characterized in that: The system comprises: An acquisition module is used to receive a processing request for an expense reimbursement form; A label creation module, used to obtain a label of the reimbursement form, wherein the label of the reimbursement form is used to indicate an abnormal problem existing in the reimbursement form, wherein the abnormal problem existing in the reimbursement form includes a problem affecting the direct payment reimbursement amount; A processing module is used to perform corresponding exception processing operations on the reimbursement form according to the label of the reimbursement form.

9. A computing device, characterized in that The method comprises a processor and a memory, wherein the processor is configured to execute instructions stored in the memory so that the computing device executes the method according to any one of claims 1 to 7.

10. A computer-readable storage medium, characterized in that: The method comprises computer program instructions, which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform the method according to any one of claims 1 to 7.

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