In the next chapter of our “Spend Risk Examined” podcast, Oversight’s Client Engagement Manager, Beverly Kays, deep dives into the unbelievable things that employees are buying on the company’s dime. Our fourth episode, Life in the Fast Lane…The Crazy Things Employees Expense, is now live and ready for listening at info.oversight.com/podcast.
During this episode, Kays explains that when organizations implement technology to monitor their spending, a funny thing starts to happen: some outlandish expenditures rise to the surface immediately. In fact, she mentions that during the holiday season, these out-of-policy expenditures can average $5,000.
Similarly, the episode details how Oversight’s AI-powered platform helps identify risky spend behaviors by applying advanced analytics to evaluate expense reports and flagging purchases that look risky.
As explained by Kays during the episode, “Commonly, one of the things we’ll see is gift cards. Someone may go to the drugstore for a truly legitimate business purchase, but at the same time, they’re picking up three or four gift cards. With our fraud and misuse analysis, plus our ability to look at the level three data from the card providers, we can see exactly what type of gift card they bought. Then, you begin to understand that it’s more than likely against corporate policies.”
Throughout the episode, Kays highlights jaw-dropping examples of employees spending outside of policy, including holiday spending trends, clothing or spa purchases, room service charges, etc. In tandem, she provides best practices for finding these risky spend behavior patterns and how organizations can address them.
Episode Four of the “Spend Risk Examined” series continues our focus on providing finance leaders with insights, best practices and lessons learned to disarm risk and elevate finance across an enterprise. Our first season includes diverse voices and perspectives from the Oversight team to explore the varied intricacies of spend risk for enterprise organizations.
You can subscribe to “Spend Risk Examined” and listen to the first four episodes today at info.oversight.com/podcast or on your preferred podcast streaming service. After listening, let us know what you’d like to hear about in Season 2.
And stay tuned for Episode 5, “A Culture of Compliance,” with Oversight’s Chief Compliance Officer, Nathanael L’Heureux.
