Overview of the Financial Controller AI Agent

The Financial Controller AI Agent is a smart tool that automatically reminds employees, on behalf of Finance teams, to submit missing expense documents or complete pending approvals through communication channels like Slack (MS Teams coming soon).

The AI Agent utilizes the communication channel integration to chase employees at specified times (for example, at month-end) and can be activated for individual entities or multiple entities within a group.

For enhanced user experience, you can also enable the smart expense note to automatically generate notes for your company's expenses.
If you are unsure exactly what the Financial Controller AI Agent can do for you, you can ask it directly.

Payhawk AI interface showing expense submission and direct message history.

Common challenges in expense management

Finance teams often struggle with manual receipt chasing, delayed approvals, and compliance oversight, which can slow down the month-end closing process. The Payhawk Financial Controller AI Agent tackles these challenges by automating expense tracking, receipt collection, and approval workflows, which significantly reduce manual follow-ups during and at the end of the month.

Key functionalities

The Financial Controller AI Agent helps streamline processes and improve efficiency in various cases.

Functionality

Capability

Automatic chasing

The Financial Controller AI Agent:

Automates follow-ups to ensure submitters and approvers act on their expenses on time.
Adjusts follow-up frequency based on the month-end calendar, business hours, and user behaviour.
Applies varied persistence and tone throughout the month and increasing reminder frequency as deadlines approach.
Sends reminders via comments and Slack.

Chasing in an additional communication channel

Connecting Payhawk to Slack will enable a new application for all workspace users in Slack from where the users will be able to interact with Payhawk and do their jobs directly from there. For more information, see the guide for employees on setting up the Slack connection.

Approval process enhancements

Approvers can approve, return, reject, or comment on requests directly in Slack, eliminating the need to open Payhawk.
The Financial Controller AI Agent proactively follows up with approvers before month-end to ensure no requests are left pending.

Submit expenses where you work

Users can submit expenses directly in Slack through an intuitive, guided chat experience, without leaving their daily workflow.
The Financial Controller AI Agent ensures all required fields, such as category and custom fields, are correctly filled and valid before submission.

Smart assistance

While the Financial Controller AI Agent cannot directly answer everyday how‑to and general questions, it will redirect you to the Payments AI Agent. The Payments Agent will then reply to you directly by using information from the Payhawk help desk.

If you request an action handled by another Payhawk AI Agent, the Financial Controller AI Agent will let you know which AI Agent can assist. That AI Agent will then message you directly so you can complete the task.

For example, if you ask the Financial Controller AI Agent to book a trip to Vienna, it will explain that the Travel AI Agent handles travel bookings. The Travel AI Agent will then message you to continue the conversation and help arrange the trip.

How the Financial Controller AI Agent works for Finance teams

By activating the Financial Controller AI Agent, Finance teams can streamline processes and enhance efficiency through:

Real-time updates for both submitters and approvers, ensuring transparency and faster decision-making.
Automated follow-ups across multiple channels - such as email, comments, push notifications, and chat - to keep expenses on track.
Improved workflow oversight, accelerating month-end close and reducing bottlenecks.

How the Financial Controller AI Agent works for employees

With the Payhawk-Slack integration, employees can seamlessly act on Payhawk smart reminders, submit expenses, and approve requests if they are part of an approval workflow.

To fully utilize the integration, employees must first authenticate, granting Slack access to their expense data. For more information, see the employee guide for setting up the Slack connection.

The Payhawk-Slack connection enables employees to do the following:

Receive smart reminders for missing documents, pending expense submissions, and approvals.
Submit and approve expenses directly in the chat using call-to-action buttons without switching applications.
Enter all required details, such as categories and custom fields, through a conversational chat flow without switching apps.

Expense submission thread showing transaction details and required information for processing.

Reminder schedules

By default, the Financial Controller AI Agent sends automated reminders during working days to employees for submitting and approving expenses. A reminder that would happen on a non-working day (weekend or public holiday in the country of incorporation of the business entity) moves to the next defined slot.

Reminder type

Examples

Reminder schedule

(local time)

Notes

Expenses to approve

Submitted expenses awaiting approval

Reminders at 4:00 PM local time:

Same day
2 days after submission date
5 days after submission date

Offline card payments to submit

Restaurants, taxis, and physical store purchases

Reminders at 10:00 AM local time:

Same day (if before 9:00 AM)
Next day (if after 9:00 AM)
5 days after previous reminder
5 days after previous reminder

Card used at the point of sale (POS).

Online card payments to submit

Online subscriptions and mobile apps

Reminders at 10:00 AM local time:

3 days after payment
5 days after previous reminder

More lenient due to receipts sitting in inboxes or vendor apps.

End-of-month

All pending submissions and approvals

Reminders at 11:00 AM local time:

3 days before month-end
Last day of the month
1 day after the last day
3 days after the last day

Ensures month-end reporting is complete.

You can also set up your own reminder schedule either through conversing with AI the Agent in Slack or in the Payhawk web portal as described below:

In the Payhawk web portal, go to Settings > AI Office > Financial Controller Agent > Configure.
Turn off the Default cadence option.
Click on the Customize in Slack link. This will redirect you to a conversation with the Financial Controller AI Agent in Slack.
In Slack, tell the Agent how often you want the it to send reminders to your employees.

To revert to the default reminder frequency, you can either communicte with the AI Agent or follow the steps in the Payhawk web portal:

In the Payhawk web portal, go to Settings > AI Office > Financial Controller Agent > Configure.
Turn on the Default cadence option.
In the dialog that opens, click on Switch to default to confirm.

Online receipt fetching is a Beta feature coming soon that will automatically fetch receipts for online payments. Once it’s available, the reminder schedule for these transactions will be adjusted accordingly.

Activating the Financial Controller AI Agent

The Financial Controller AI Agent comes out of the box and is included in both the Payhawk mobile app and web portal.

Payhawk dashboard displaying recent expenses and user tasks for financial management.

Employee access to the AI Agent in Slack depends on whether a Payhawk administrator at your company has enabled the communication channel in the Payhawk web portal from Settings > AI Office.

Processing your data

For more information about how Payhawk processes personal data for the Financial Controller AI Agent feature, see the following resources:

Payhawk Terms & Conditions
Global Privacy Policy - Covers personal data for which Payhawk acts as a Controller.
Data Processing Addendum - Covers personal data for which Payhawk acts as a Processor.