Understanding AI auto-approval decisions
How to read an AI decision on an expense, review an AI-declined wellness receipt, and revert an AI approval or decline back to manual review.
When AI auto-approval is turned on for your company, CLVR can review certain uploaded expense reports against a set of rules and either approve them, decline them, or hand them to your team for a normal review. You stay in control the whole time: every AI decision is visible, explained, and can be reverted. This article explains what the AI looks at, how to read its decision, how to review a receipt the AI declined, and how to revert any AI decision back to manual review.
What the AI reviews
Today the AI only evaluates wellness (friskvård) expense reports, specifically gym membership receipts. Every other category, and every other expense type, follows your normal review flow untouched.
When an employee uploads a wellness receipt and auto-approval is enabled, CLVR reads the receipt against the wellness rules and returns one of three outcomes:
- Approve, when the AI is confident the receipt clearly meets the rules.
- Decline, when the receipt clearly does not qualify.
- Defer, when the AI is not confident enough either way.
The confidence threshold is 85%. Anything below that is deferred to your team, so the AI only acts on its own when it is sure.
Spotting an AI-reviewed expense
In the expense queue, any report the AI looked at carries a small sparkle icon. Hover it and you see Auto-reviewed by AI. That is your cue that there is an AI decision to read when you open the report.
Reading the AI decision
Open the expense to see the decision in full. The decision shows a one-line headline with the confidence percentage, followed by up to three short reasons the AI gives for its call:
- An approved report reads AI approved this expense with 92% confidence (the number is the AI's own confidence for that receipt).
- A declined report reads AI declined this expense with 88% confidence, and adds the specific reason it did not qualify.
- A deferred report reads AI deferred this expense to human review, which simply means the AI was not confident enough and left it for your team.
The percentage is the AI's confidence in its own decision, not a score for the receipt or the employee. A high number means the receipt was clear-cut, not that anyone did anything wrong.
What each outcome means for the report
- Approved. The report is set to approved and moves toward reimbursement through payroll, the same as a manual approval. The employee is notified as usual.
- Declined. The report is declined, and both you and the employee are notified with the reason. The employee can fix the issue and resubmit; there is no need for them to start over.
- Deferred. Nothing is decided. The report stays Pending and waits for your team exactly like any other report in the queue.
Whenever the AI approves or declines a report, your team also gets an in-app notification tagged AI REVIEW so the decision does not slip past you.
Reviewing an AI-declined expense
A declined receipt still lands in your Expenses queue, so you can read the reasoning and decide what happens next: approve it yourself if the decline was wrong, or let the employee fix and resend it. The final say is always yours.
Find the expense in your Expenses queue and open it. At the top of the details you will see a red This expense has been rejected notice with the date. Inside it, the AI section is marked with a sparkle and a heading like AI declined this expense with 92% confidence, followed by up to three short bullet reasons and, when the AI added one, a longer plain-language explanation.
If a person also declined the report (for example on a resubmission), their written reason appears in the same red notice alongside the AI block, so you can compare both.
You have two ways to resolve a declined expense:
- Overturn it yourself if the AI was wrong and the receipt is valid. Use Revert AI Decision (see below) to reopen the expense, then approve it.
- Let the employee resubmit if the receipt really has a problem (wrong category, ineligible items, an unreadable image). The employee can edit and resend it from their own view, and the review starts fresh.
Read the bullet reasons before you act. They usually point straight to the issue, like a receipt that is not a gym membership or a date outside the allowed period, which tells you immediately whether this is a genuine decline or a miss.
Let the employee resubmit instead
You do not have to act at all. An AI-declined report can be edited and resubmitted by the employee from their own My Benefits view using Edit & Resubmit. When they do, the expense resets to Pending, the previous reviewers and the AI decision are cleared, and review runs again from the start (AI auto-approval may evaluate the new version too). It returns to your queue as a fresh pending item, with the earlier decline kept in its history.
Check the timeline
Open the expense timeline in the sidebar to confirm the sequence. You will see entries such as AI declined this expense report and, if the employee has already acted, a line showing they resubmitted the expense report. That tells you at a glance whether a declined item is still waiting on you or has already come back as a new submission.
Reverting an AI decision
The AI never has the last word. If an AI decision looks wrong, whether it approved something you want to check or declined something you would have allowed, you can revert it and send the expense back for manual review.
Find the Revert AI Decision button
Open the expense from Expenses. Any expense that AI decided shows an AI decision card at the top, marked with a sparkle and the AI's confidence, for example AI approved this expense with 92% confidence or AI declined this expense with 88% confidence. When AI handled the decision, that card carries a Revert AI Decision button.
You only see Revert AI Decision while the AI decision is still in force. Once a decision has been reverted, the button is gone (see "An AI decision can only be reverted once" below).
Revert the decision
Select Revert AI Decision on the AI decision card.
A confirmation window opens with a warning that this sends the expense back to pending for manual review.
Enter a reason in Why are you reverting this decision? This field is required, so the button stays disabled until you fill it in. Keep it short and factual, for example "Receipt includes non-eligible items" or "Wrong category".
Confirm with Revert AI Decision, or back out with Cancel. On success you get a confirmation that the AI decision was reverted and the expense is now pending manual review.
What changes when you revert
Reverting resets the expense so a person can review it from scratch:
- The status goes back to Pending and the completion date is cleared.
- Any approver step that AI had set to changes requested is reset to pending.
- Any open change requests on the expense are closed.
- The reason you typed is saved with the decision for the record.
The expense then follows the normal review path again. Note that resubmitting or re-running the upload may trigger a fresh AI evaluation, so reverting alone does not switch AI off for that expense.
What the employee sees
The employee who submitted the expense is emailed that the automatic decision was reverted and that the report is now pending manual review. The email tells them they will be notified again once a decision is made, so they do not need to do anything in the meantime.
The reverted summary
After you revert, the full AI decision card collapses into a compact summary headed AI decision reverted. Use View details to expand it (and Hide details to collapse it again). Expanded, it shows:
- The original AI decision and its reasons.
- Reverted by [name] on [date], so it is clear who acted and when.
- The Reason you entered.
This keeps a clear trail on the expense even though the decision no longer applies.
An AI decision can only be reverted once
Reverting is a one-time action per expense. After a decision is reverted, the Revert AI Decision button does not come back, and trying again is blocked with a message that the AI decision has already been reverted. From that point the expense is handled like any other manual review.
Troubleshooting
- I do not see any AI decisions. Auto-approval is a company setting. If your company has not enabled Auto-approve expense reports, no reports are auto-reviewed. AI receipt scanning must be on first.
- A wellness receipt was not auto-reviewed. The AI only acts when it is at least 85% confident. Below that it defers, so the report simply waits in the queue as Pending for your team.
- The AI declined something I would have approved. Open the report and select Revert AI Decision. It returns to Pending and you can approve it manually.
- An employee says their wellness expense was declined automatically. They can read the reason on the report, correct it, and resubmit. If it should have passed, revert the decision instead.
- The Revert AI Decision button is gone. The decision has already been reverted, or the employee has resubmitted (which clears the old AI decision). Check the timeline to see which happened.
- The confirm button stays greyed out. The reason field is empty. Type a short reason in Why are you reverting this decision? to enable it.
- I reverted the wrong expense. You cannot un-revert, but the expense is now in normal manual review, so you can approve or decline it as usual.
- The employee disagrees but you think the decline was right. Leave it declined and let them edit and resubmit with a corrected receipt. The review restarts cleanly.