Real-Time Spend Approval Using Activity-Based Rule Matching
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Organizations face vulnerabilities due to trusting individuals with their funds, leading to potential embezzlement and unintentional misuse through digital payment means like digital cards and cryptocurrencies, necessitating real-time expenditure approval mechanisms.
Innovation Solution
A method and system using processors to analyze scheduling data and expenditure rules, and optionally machine learning models, to automatically approve or reject expenditure requests based on user attributes, request attributes, and activity schedules.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If organization funds are entrusted to individuals for digital transactions, then operational efficiency and ease of payment are improved, but vulnerability to embezzlement and unintentional misuse increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary approval system that sits between the individual user and the organization's funds. The system analyzes expenditure requests against predefined rules, user profiles, and organizational policies before allowing transactions. This intermediary layer maintains operational efficiency by enabling digital payments while protecting against misuse through automated verification and approval workflows.
2Reliability
If manual approval processes are implemented for expenditure requests, then control over fund usage is improved, but processing time and operational efficiency deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic approval system that adapts its complexity based on the expenditure request. Routine transactions within predefined limits are approved automatically through rule-based systems, while exceptional or high-value requests trigger more rigorous multi-level approval workflows. This dynamic approach maintains strong control over expenditures while minimizing processing time for standard operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-defining expenditure rules, user spending limits, and approval hierarchies before transactions occur. User profiles are pre-configured with authorized spending categories and limits, enabling automated real-time validation of expenditure requests without requiring manual review for routine transactions.
3Measurement precision
If comprehensive expenditure rules and analysis are applied to all transactions, then accuracy in preventing misuse is improved, but system complexity and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by tailoring the rigor of expenditure analysis to specific contexts. Different user roles, expenditure categories, and transaction types are subject to different levels of scrutiny based on pre-configured rules. High-risk categories trigger more comprehensive analysis while low-risk routine transactions undergo simpler validation, maintaining accuracy without uniform complexity across all transactions.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of approving expenditures in real-time, comprising receiving an expenditure request initiated by a user associated with an organization for transferring funds of the organization in exchange for one or more products and/or services, identifying request attribute(s) relating to the user, the value, the funds, the product, the service, a time of reception of the expenditure request and/or a geographical location of the user, analyzing scheduling data obtained from one or more online data sources which is indicative of one or more activity attributes of activity(s) scheduled for the user, automatically determining compliance between the request attribute(s) and one or more expenditure rules predefined for the product(s) and/or service(s) with respect to the activity attribute(s) and transmitting a response to the expenditure request according to the determination which includes approval of the expenditure request in case of compliance and rejection in case of incompliance.