T&E solutions provider Emburse announced Emburse AI, which provides artificial intelligence capacities across the company’s entire suite of solutions. Emburse AI is trained using data from the company’s over 1 billion spend transactions. 

The release enhances receipt and invoice processing. The AI can read, interpret and act on transaction data, going beyond simple text extraction to leverage machine learning to understand context, predict missing or unclear information, and adapt to different formats for more precise data extraction. The solution automatically maps expenses to one of 39 categories (so far) for Emburse Expense Enterprise users to streamline expense allocation and provides richer insights. It auto-fills and interprets data for employees, automating routine tasks for users. The AI identifies the applicable currency, date format and tax rates, and even common regional merchants to support finance teams globally. Finally, it can proactively extract the additional tip amount data required for meal expenses to save employees time when submitting expense claims.

All AI data is encrypted in transit and secured and processed on localized servers. 

“Finance teams handle hundreds of detailed processes every day, where even one seemingly-minor error can lead to significant financial and operational consequences,” said Paul Nagy, chief product officer at Emburse. “With Emburse AI, we’re giving users a powerful tool to minimize manual effort, improve accuracy, and dramatically reduce time spent on managing expenses and invoices. This latest milestone for Emburse sets the stage for future AI enhancements, including agentic AI, to help finance teams operate more efficiently and strategically.”

Emburse plans to further improve its AI. Future updates will include AI-powered, predictive insights and more. 

Emburse formed in 2020 from a  group of six travel and expense management software vendors — Abacus, Captio, Certify, Chrome River, Nexonia and Tallie — who came together under a single company, Emburse, in an effort to challenge SAP Concur. The news comes shortly after the announcement of Jonas Hirshfield joining as the company’s chief information officer. Prior to this, he was CIO at remote learning solutions provider Class Technologies.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board sanctioned Natalie Murphy, a former partner at Heaton & Company, for violating PCAOB rules and standards and failing to cooperate with an inspection.

Murphy violated PCAOB Rule 4006, Duty to Cooperate With Inspectors, in an investigation concerning the state of audit documentation and the timing of audit procedures. When inspection staff informed Murphy of audits selected for review, she said the workpaper documentation for two of the selected audits was complete and just needed to be “compiled” in the firm’s audit software, despite a substantial portion being incomplete at the time. Murphy also obtained additional evidence and performed substantive procedures for one of the audits days before providing them to staff, while improperly representing that all audit procedures had been completed prior to the issuance of the firm’s audit report. 

In addition, Murphy violated an auditing standard, AS 1215, Audit Documentation, by failing to document modifications and additions made to the workpapers after their completion dates for two inspected audits, and by failing to timely assemble a complete and final set of documentation for the two inspected audits and three additional issuer audits.

“The respondent failed to comply with multiple PCAOB rules and standards, leading to the sanctions imposed by the Board today,” Robert Rice, director of the PCAOB’s Division of Enforcement and Investigations, said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue enforcement actions to address such violations and ensure that accountability is upheld at every level of the profession.”

Without admitting or denying the findings, Murphy consented to the PCAOB’s order, which:

• Censures Murphy;
• Imposes a $50,000 civil money penalty; and, 
• Bars her from being an associated person of a registered firm with the option to petition the PCAOB to terminate the bar after five years, provided she has completed 40 hours of continuing professional education, in addition to CPE requirements connected with any license she holds.

The PCAOB has increased its enforcement activity, according to a new report, even as it faces the prospect of being absorbed into the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Corporate accounting solutions provider insightsoftware [sic] announced the release of Lineos, its AI-powered suite for financial planning and analysis, accounting and operations. Overall, it is intended to be used for automating manual tasks, surfacing data-driven insights and patterns, and simplifying workflows with generative AI. 

“While finance teams recognize the potential of AI, many struggle to make it meaningful,” said Lee An Schommer, chief product officer and general manager for ERP reporting & BI at insightsoftware. “CFOs are challenging their teams to boost productivity with AI, but finding a starting point can be difficult. At insightsoftware, we are dedicated to the Office of the CFO, delivering AI solutions that tackle real-world challenges like report generation. With Lineos, we empower finance teams with an AI-powered ‘line of sight’ into their data, enabling confident, data-driven decision-making.”

Specifically, the AI gives access to Doc Assist, which gives AI-sourced answers about the product itself, Data Assist, which instantly breaks down trends and anomalies in business data to offer guided analysis tools, Text Assist, which groups and summarizes data, Report Assist, which creates detailed, professional reports with no advanced training needed, and Content Assist, which suggests the best pre-built reports, dashboards, and views for the current task. 

Lineos is also integrated throughout the entire insightsoftware product suite, including Operational Reporting for Oracle EBS and OCA, Operational Reporting for SAP ECC and S/4HANA, Operational Reporting and Distribution, Budgeting and Planning, Disclosure Management and Regulatory Reporting, Strategic Financial Reporting for EPM solutions and more. 

The release comes just shortly after insightsoftware announced the launch of a new reporting solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central users, Jet Reports Online (insightsoftware acquired Jet Global Data Technologies in 2019.) Last month the company also announced it had acquired JustPerform, a cloud-native planning, consolidation and reporting platform, adding its enterprise performance management capabilities to insightsoftware’s portfolio.