Custom Agent Capabilities
An Agent acts on expense reports using the actions described below. This reference helps you phrase your instructions so your agent reliably does what you intend — and doesn’t accidentally take the wrong action.
Agent Capability Reference
How to write instructions that submit expense reports
Sends an open (draft) expense report forward to the approver for review.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Submit expense reports for approval
- Send reports to my manager when they’re ready
- Forward expense reports to the approval queue
- Submit reports that have no violations
- Submit reports that are under $500 total
- Submit all open reports at the end of the month
How to write instructions that approve expense reports
Marks a submitted expense report as approved, moving it to the reimbursement queue.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Approve expense reports that meet my workspace rules
- Approve reports with no violations
- Approve reports under $1,000
- Approve reports when all receipts are attached
- Automatically approve reports from trusted submitters
- Approve reports that have already been reviewed by a first-level approver
How to write instructions that reject expense reports
Sends a submitted expense report back to the submitter with a user-facing rejection comment explaining why.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Reject reports that have violations
- Reject reports over my spending limit
- Send reports back to the submitter when receipts are missing
- Reject reports that contain duplicate expenses
- Reject reports from submitters who have outstanding compliance issues
- Reject and explain why the report was returned
How to write instructions that un-submit expense reports
Un-submits a submitted expense report, returning it to draft so the submitter can edit it.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Retract my submitted report so I can edit it
- Un-submit a report before it’s approved
- Pull back a report that was submitted by mistake
- Return a report to draft status
How to write instructions that take over a report as approver
Reassigns the agent as the current approver on a report that was routed to someone else, giving the agent the authority to approve or reject it. Requires workspace-admin role.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Take over reports over $10,000 regardless of who they were submitted to
- Seize reports with violations and reject them
- Take control of reports submitted to out-of-office approvers and approve them
- Intervene on any report that has a violation
How to write instructions that route reports to a specific approver
Routes a submitted report to a specific approver by email, replacing the current approver in the workflow. Requires workspace-admin role.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Route reports over $5,000 to the finance manager
- Forward reports with international expenses to compliance@example.com
- Send reports from the engineering team to their designated approver
- Reroute reports that exceed the department budget to the CFO
How to write instructions that create new expense reports
Creates a new expense report with a specified name, independent of any currently open report.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Create a new expense report for my Q2 travel
- Start a new report called Monthly Subscriptions
- Open a new report for the offsite trip
- Create a report named after the project
How to write instructions that edit expenses
Edits, deletes, or restores individual expenses on the current report — field-level changes such as amount, category, merchant, reimbursable status, tags, or tax.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Set the category to Travel for all flight expenses
- Mark expenses over $500 as non-reimbursable
- Remove the tax code from all expenses on this report
- Change the merchant name to match the receipt
- Delete expenses that have no receipt attached
- Tag all meals expenses with the client project code
How to write instructions that post comments on reports
Posts a message to the expense report thread, visible to all participants.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Leave a note explaining the approval decision
- Notify the submitter that their report was approved
- Post a comment asking the submitter to add missing receipts
- Acknowledge receipt of the report with a message
- Post a summary of the analysis performed before approving
- Leave a reminder for the submitter about next steps
How to write instructions that look up expense data
Runs a read-only lookup across expense history to retrieve spend totals, rankings, period comparisons, or per-submitter figures the rule needs to make a decision.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Check the submitter’s total spend this month before deciding
- Look up how many reports the submitter has had rejected in the past 90 days
- Find the submitter’s total spend on travel in the last quarter
- Retrieve the workspace’s total spend in the current period for comparison
- Check whether the submitter has any outstanding approved but unreimbursed reports
How to write instructions that manage workspace settings and members
Inspects workspace configuration, answers membership questions, and — for workspace admins — adds or removes members and modifies workspace settings such as categories and approval rules.
Example phrases for your agent’s instructions:
- Add new employees to the workspace when they join
- Remove members from the workspace when they leave the company
- Add a new expense category when requested
- Show me who is on this workspace
- What is the current approval mode for this workspace?
- Copy the category list from one workspace to another
This reference covers all 11 Custom Agent capabilities.
