Expensify Concierge: Your hybrid expense agent

TL;DR – Concierge now blends AI and white-glove, human-powered support to create the expense agent you never had, that saves you time and money 24/7 via chat, email, and text.  

If you've used Expensify since 2015, you surely know Concierge, our embedded AI.  Concierge has been Expensify's tireless workhorse behind the scenes, powering everything from tech support to accounting workflows, using a combination of 24/7 human agents and AI automation.  

It's hard to overstate how important Concierge has been for building Expensify into the tech-forward brand it is today, and now you can think of it as your new AI expense agent.

Quick summary – Your new expense tracking AI agent now:

• Creates, auto-categorizes, tags, and adds descriptions to expenses
• Learns from everything you do
• Responds faster when you need help, anywhere you need it
• Monitors policy compliance in more scenarios
• Automatically submits reports based on your timeline
• Escalates to a human when necessary
• … and so much more
• Email concierge@expensify.com, text 47777 (US numbers only), or chat with Concierge in the app to get started

The explosion of LLM technology

While Concierge has been hard at work, "Large Language Model" (LLM) technology took the world by storm, becoming simultaneously famous for its conversational flair… and infamous for confidently "hallucinating" (making up facts when they don't know an answer).  

Though we instantly saw the appeal and potential of this for improving Concierge, we also recognized the incredible challenge of the "march of nines" – making something work in the lab is easy; making it work in the wild is very, very hard.

What Concierge can do now

All this is why it's so exciting to reveal the product of our very hard work to integrate the best LLM tech into what we think is the best real-world financial AI. This combines the realtime conversational flair of LLMs with Concierge's proven human-hybrid, accuracy-optimized architecture, to enable Concierge to do the following:

Answer a much wider range of more complex support questions automatically, under close human supervision

Concierge is a bit different from fully autonomous chat systems in that it's not just AI: we seamlessly blend the latest LLM tech with our global team of 24/7 support experts to collaborate in realtime on the best answer to send in each situation.  

For example:

• If you ask a basic factual question, Concierge will respond immediately in a fully autonomous fashion.

• If the question is especially complex or requires nuanced understanding, Concierge will escalate the proposed response to a human for realtime review before sending.

Detect a much wider range of potential compliance issues

For example, Concierge will now:

• Tell you if a receipt appears to have been generated using AI.

• Highlight if a receipt's merchant or line items suggest gambling, tobacco, or other unauthorized types of purchase.

Autocorrect a much wider range of ambiguous scenarios

SmartScan has always auto-categorized the receipts you scan, based on specific information available on the receipt and credit card feed, as manually configured in your workspace settings.  

However, now Concierge will use its dramatically improved ability to understand the context of an expense – combined with improved language skills – to more accurately match the incoming merchant to the most reasonable category.  

For example, Concierge will:

• Recognize that "Uber" should be categorized as "Rideshare" without you needing to configure it.

• Correctly select between "Travel (over $1000)" and "Travel (under $1000)" categories when it sees an "Alaska Airlines ($2000)" expense.

• Provide a one-click option to categorize on the go when Concierge detects that a merchant could apply to multiple cost centers.

Perform a much wider range of direct automation commands

Though Concierge will always attempt to proactively anticipate your needs and do it for you without asking… when in doubt, just ask!  As they say, "a closed mouth don't get fed."  

If you want something done, just say it, and if it deals with expenses, odds are Concierge can do it (and if not, it'll tell you how).  

For example, you can say (via texting 47777, emailing concierge@expensify.com, or just chatting in app):

• "Create a $50 Olive Garden expense for a meeting with Evil Corp" 

• "Record 50 miles from home to Dunder Mifflin"

• "<receipt image> for coffee with Bob"

Ask and ye shall receive… from Concierge

Just ask Concierge anything you want, anywhere you want – whether in your personal Concierge chat, on an expense report, or right within any expense – and it'll either do it right, find a human who can, or tell you how to do it yourself.  

I'm sure you agree that the AI world is advancing at a sometimes terrifying pace, with the prospect of superintelligent toothbrushes questioning the meaning of teeth looming closer every day.  

Our job has always been to use the best technology available to give you the simplest experience possible, without losing sight of what really matters: the accuracy of your finances, and the value of your time.

If you have any more ideas for how we can use AI to make your life better, just send us an email at concierge@expensify.com. We’re always happy to hear from you. 

-david

Founder and CEO of Expensify

P.S. – Want a quick demo of your new expense assistant in action? Check out the video below: