Employees use AI to make fake expense receipts, survey

Emburse has published survey findings showing widespread use of artificial intelligence tools by employees to create fake expense receipts. The research covered workers in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The most striking result was in the US, where four in 10 employees said they had used AI to generate a fake receipt for a business expense. The same share said they had used employer-funded AI tools to do so, pointing to a compliance problem that extends beyond personal software use.

Among US respondents, 19% said they had used AI to fabricate a purchase entirely, while 15% said they had used it to increase the value of an item they actually bought. Another 6% said they had used AI to replace a lost receipt for a genuine purchase. Nearly one in 10, or 9%, said they had built their own AI tools to generate fake receipts.

The survey of 2,000 employed adults, split equally between the US and UK, suggests expense fraud is overlapping with a broader pattern of unsanctioned workplace AI use. In the US, 63% of employees said they use employer-funded AI tools for personal purposes, and 31% said more than 30% of their logged use was unrelated to work.

Some respondents did not see that personal use as harmful. About 35% said it made them more effective at work, 28% said it helped them learn AI faster, and 16% said they were using spare token budgets that would otherwise go unused.

Other responses pointed to more direct tensions between workers and employers. The survey found that 22% of employees were using employer-paid AI tools to apply for other jobs, while 18% said they were using them for personal reasons because they believed their employer would replace them with AI.

Financial pressure

The findings also linked fraudulent expense behaviour to strain on personal finances. More than one in four US employees, or 27%, said they had made personal purchases and passed them off as business expenses because of their financial circumstances. A further 20% said they had considered doing so.

Compared with Emburse data from 2024, the share of employees who said they had passed off personal purchases as business expenses rose by 3 percentage points. The share who said they had considered doing so increased by 11 percentage points.

Reimbursement delays appear to be part of that pressure. Among those who said they had passed off personal purchases as business expenses, 51% said they had incurred fees or interest on a personal credit card because expense repayments took too long. That was up 11 percentage points from the earlier survey.

Another 23% said they had delayed personal purchases or payments while waiting to be reimbursed for business spending, while 16% of US employees said they would prefer to use a company card because expenses take too long to process. The survey also found less interest in using personal cards for rewards, with 9% saying they would choose a personal card over a corporate card for cashback and 7% saying they would do so for loyalty points.

These figures suggest a shift in employee attitudes toward how business expenses should be funded and reimbursed. They also indicate that easy-to-use AI tools may be amplifying existing weaknesses in expense systems rather than creating them from scratch.

Michele Shepard, Chief Revenue Officer at Emburse, said the risk has become harder to manage with older controls. "AI makes it easier than ever to fabricate receipts and bypass traditional controls, so organizations need a more proactive, AI-centric approach to managing spend. With AI increasingly used to create convincing fake receipts and manipulate expense data, the only effective defense is AI-powered prevention and detection," Shepard said.

She added that companies without AI-based monitoring would struggle to keep up with changing employee behaviour. "Organisations that aren't leveraging AI will be at a significant disadvantage in finding and stopping these emerging threats. Identifying expense fraud and abuse remains critical, but the most effective strategy is preventing non-compliant spend before it happens through clear policies, fast reimbursements, virtual cards, and AI-powered controls that improve the employee experience while increasing visibility for finance teams," Shepard said.

Governance challenge

The survey also raised questions about oversight of AI spending itself. As businesses pay for subscriptions and usage across multiple tools, personal use by employees may increase costs without clear accountability for how those systems are being used.

Shepard said the issue was not always deliberate misuse. "For the most part, employees aren't intentionally misusing corporate AI tools. In many cases, they've been encouraged to adopt AI quickly and integrate it into their daily lives. The real challenge for employers isn't bad behavior, it's a lack of visibility. When employees use company-funded AI for everything from personal tasks to job searches, organizations need a clearer understanding of what's being purchased, how it's being used, and whether it's delivering value," she said.

She added: "As AI spending continues to grow, finance and technology leaders will need the same level of oversight and accountability they've long expected for every other category of business spend."