Alcohol Detection
Table of Contents
Use Case
Organizations need to ensure employee expenses comply with alcohol-related policies, particularly when alcohol purchases may be restricted or conditionally permitted. Because alcohol spend often only appears in receipt text rather than structured expense fields, it can be difficult to detect through traditional monitoring. Poor-quality or faded receipts further increase the risk of oversight.
The Alcohol Detection risk analytic identifies transactions with elevated compliance risk by extracting and analyzing receipt text to detect alcohol-related purchases. Organizations can configure rules aligned with their specific policies, enabling compliance and audit teams to automatically flag nuanced scenarios that previously required manual review, strengthening proactive oversight and policy enforcement.
| Description |
Identifies transactions where an item limit rule related to purchase of alcohol (configured by the customer) is met. Item limit rules consist of defined attributes and thresholds that must be satisfied before the transaction is evaluated against the applicable scoring criteria. |
| Domain | Employee Spend |
| Analysis Type | Context Flag |
| Focus Area | Text |
| Score Methodology | Receipt text is extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to convert it into searchable, readable text. Then, the extracted text is evaluated against configurable alcohol-related keywords and contextual rules. A flag is applied when the extracted text meets detection criteria while respecting customer-defined exceptions (e.g., permitted alcohol types or region-specific allowances). |
Default Scoring Criteria
Importance: 5 (default)
Enabled: True (default)
No rules are configured by default. Rules must be set by user based on the transaction value.
Rule Configuration
To configure a rule for this risk analysis, navigate to the Risk Analysis Settings page and click Alcohol Detection. Then, click Add A Rule.
The following rule fields are required:
| Rule Field | Description | Settings Options |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Name for the specific rule. | Free text |
| Description | Description of the rule. This is used for internal reference only and does not influence the rule itself. | Free text |
| Context | Specifies when the rule should apply by narrowing conditions such as country, merchant, or expense type. Only alcohol-related rules will be executed in this setting. | Free text |
The three types of rules currently supported are:
| Type | Example |
|---|---|
| Price | “No alcoholic items priced more than $20.” |
| Item Name | “No alcoholic items from the brand Anheuser-Busch.” |
| Percentage of Total Receipt Amount | "An alcoholic item may not exceed 50% of the total amount.” |
Multiple rule types can be combined in a single setting, but it is recommended to separate them to keep flags clear and easy to interpret.
Next, click Add a Rule Component below the rule fields. To set a component, select from the “Field” and “Search Type” dropdowns.
The “Value” field will appear when you select a “Field” and “Search Type”. Select a value by clicking the checkbox beside it.
See a description of all fields, search types, and value types available below.
| Field | Search Type | Value Type |
|---|---|---|
| Attendee Type | Includes OR Excludes | Preset list |
| Company | Includes OR Excludes | List populated from customer data* |
| Employee | Includes OR Excludes | List populated from customer data* |
| Employee Work Country | Includes OR Excludes | Preset list |
| Expense Type | Includes OR Excludes | Preset list |
| Has Attendees | Includes OR Excludes | Preset list |
| Merchant Category Code | Includes OR Excludes | List populated from customer data* |
| Merchant Category Group | Includes OR Excludes | List populated from customer data* |
| Merchant Country | Includes OR Excludes | Preset list |
| Payment Method | Includes OR Excludes | Preset list |
| Personal Expense | Includes OR Excludes | Preset list |
| Subject Classification | Includes OR Excludes | List populated from customer data* |
| Vendor Name | Includes OR Excludes | List populated from customer data* |
*For values populated from customer data, value lists will not populate if data is not available.
Where multiple rule components are set, they operate only in an “and” manner.
Unique Configurations
This analysis utilizes rules related to alcohol purchases configured by the user, for which they can configure the following:
- Rule components: specific restrictions by field to limit the transactions that are considered by the rule.
- Scoring criteria based on the transaction value. Strong, moderate, and weak values can be set.
- Automatic criteria: transactions that meet these criteria will appear in Monitoring Review results, regardless of the Risk Engine Score.
Sample Output
Exclusions
None