Employee guide for using the Financial Controller AI Agent in MS Teams

If a Payhawk Administrator at your company has connected your Payhawk account to MS Teams, you will see the Financial Controller AI Agent Payhawk app in your MS Teams workspace under Apps.

The Financial Controller AI Agent allows employees to interact directly with Payhawk inside MS Teams, submitting, reviewing, and approving expenses without leaving their workflow.

Use cases

Depending on the tasks you need to complete and your permissions, you can use the Financial Controller AI Agent in several common expense management scenarios.

The suggested prompts and questions below are examples meant to show how you can interact with the AI Agent in MS Teams. You’re free to chat with the AI Agent in your own words and style.

When you first open the Financial Controller AI Agent in MS Teams, you will need to authenticate your Payhawk account with MS Teams.

Once this step is completed, you won’t need to authenticate again unless you manually disconnect the integration.

Step (What you need to do)	Result (What the AI Agent does)
Open the Financial Controller AI Agent in MS Teams. Send a simple message such as "Hello."	The AI Agent detects that your Payhawk account is not yet linked and displays a Log in button.
Click on the Log in button.	A new browser window opens for authentication.
In the browser window, sign in with your Payhawk credentials.	The AI Agent verifies your login and connects your account.
On the success screen that appears, click on Done.	You see a confirmation message indicating that your Payhawk account is now connected.
Return to the MS Teams app.	You can now continue chatting and performing actions with the AI Agent directly in MS Teams.

Conversational expense submission

When your account has been connected, you can chat directly with the AI Agent to view and submit expenses.

Step (What you need to do)	Result (What the AI Agent does)
Go to MS Teams and open your chat with the Financial Controller AI Agent.	The chat opens, ready for you to interact with the AI Agent.
Type "Do I have pending expenses?"	The AI Agent replies with a list of your pending expenses, for example, “Delta Airlines, Netflix, Costa Coffee”.
Select an expense by replying "I'd like to submit the expense from Netflix."	The AI Agent suggests related values for missing expense field data, for example, “Category: Subscriptions, Note: Netflix subscription”.
Confirm by replying "Yes, go ahead."	The AI Agent updates and submits the expense, and then confirms the completion of the action in the chat.

Submitting expenses by uploading a document

You can also submit expenses by uploading a receipt or an invoice image.

Step (What you need to do)	Result (What the AI Agent does)
Download or open your expense document file (receipt or invoice). Drag and drop the file into the chat or click the Attach File icon in MS Teams.	The AI Agent confirms it has received the document and is processing it.
Wait while the AI Agent extracts the expense data using Payhawk's OCR.	Once complete, the AI Agent confirms the expense submission and displays key details, for example, “Category: Meals, Amount €45.00”.

Receiving smart reminders for pending expenses and actions

The Financial Controller AI Agent proactively reminds you of pending expenses and actions.

Step (What you need to do)	Result (What the AI Agent does)
When a reminder is automatically triggered, you receive a message by the AI Agent in MS Teams.	The AI Agent sends "You have a new expense that needs to be submitted!"
Reply directly to the AI Agent with the missing information, for example, "Category: Training and Team events; Note: Teambuilding expense."	The AI Agent updates the expense and confirms the successful submission directly in the chat.

Approving expenses in MS Teams

If you’ve been included in an approval expense workflow, you can approve expenses directly in MS Teams via the Financial Controller AI Agent without having to switch to the Payhawk Web Portal.

Step (What you need to do)	Result (What the AI Agent does)
Type "Do I have any expenses for approval?"	The AI Agent returns all pending approvals with details, for example, "Uber, 33.49 EUR".
Reply "Approve it."	The AI Agent confirms your approval with a success message, for example, "The expense from Uber for 33.49 EUR has been successfully approved.".

Updating the language preferences for MS Teams notifications

You can change the language of the smart reminders you receive in MS Teams from your profile settings.

The change will only apply to new messages; previously sent smart reminders will remain in the original language.