Expense reports are universally hated. Employees dread the manual data entry - saving physical receipts for weeks, typing merchant names and amounts one by one, calculating totals and hoping the math is right, then submitting and waiting weeks for reimbursement. Managers hate reviewing them - opening each line item, squinting at blurry receipt photos, mentally checking if meal amounts seem too high, cross-referencing company policy in another tab. Finance teams hate processing them - manually entering approved amounts into QuickBooks, hunting down missing receipts, reconciling with credit card statements. For an average expense report with 10 line items, the total time across all three people is 45-60 minutes. Multiply that by 100 employees submitting monthly reports, and you're spending 75-100 hours per month just on expense report busy work.
With altx forms, the same process takes 5 minutes total. Here's the employee experience: Take a photo of your receipt with your phone. Upload to the expense form. AI-powered OCR instantly extracts the date (transaction date, not photo date), merchant name (even if handwritten), and amount (total after tax) and auto-fills the line item. If you select 'Client Meal' as the category, the form immediately asks 'Which client?' and 'Number of attendees?' to calculate per-person cost. If a meal exceeds $50 per person, it flags the policy violation and requires an explanation field before you can submit. Upload all your receipts (10 receipts takes about 2 minutes), review the auto-filled data, add any missing details, click Submit. The system calculates your total automatically and validates against policy. If your total is under $500 and has no policy violations, it auto-approves and routes straight to finance. If not, it goes to your manager.
The manager sees a summary view: employee name, department, total amount, and any policy violations highlighted in red. Click on a flagged item to see the violation ('Meal exceeds $50/person policy - claimed for 4 attendees = $62.50/person') and the employee's explanation ('Client dinner at steakhouse, discussed Q4 contract renewal'). Manager can approve (goes to finance), reject (goes back to employee with comments), or request changes (employee can edit without restarting the approval chain). Takes 2 minutes to review. Finance sees approved reports automatically exported to QuickBooks with line items mapped to correct accounts, receipts attached as PDFs, and employee reimbursement bills created. Zero manual data entry. The system also tracks metrics: average expense by department, most common policy violations, approval times by manager, spending trends month over month. Built-in RAG analytics let you ask 'Which employees have the most meal expenses over limit?' or 'What merchants are used most frequently?' and get instant answers with source citations.
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