How to Enable BigTime Expense Agent for Your Firm

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Prerequisites and Requirements
• Enabling BigTime Expense Agent
  • Step-by-Step Instructions
• How BigTime Expense Agent Works
• Permission-Based Behavior
  • Project Access
  • Unsupported Actions
• Review and Approval Policies
• Data Usage and AI Training
• Notes and Limitations

Please note that BigTime Expense Agent is currently in Early Access and available to a limited group of customers. If you're interested in accessing this feature, please submit an inquiry here. 

Expense Agent will be included for all Premier subscription firms and offered as a trial for Essential and Advanced customers. Availability and packaging subject to change. 

Overview

BigTime Expense Agent is an AI-powered capability within BigTime that allows users to create, view, and update expenses directly through AVA, the BigTime AI Assistant. From a system administrator perspective, Expense Agent is governed by Active Features settings, existing permission controls, and standard expense review and approval workflows.

Expense Agent is designed to streamline expense entry and maintenance while respecting firm-level configuration, permissions, and compliance requirements.

Prerequisites and Requirements

To make BigTime Expense Agent available to users, the following requirements must be met:

• The BigTime AI Assistant Active Feature must be enabled
• The BigTime Expense Agent Active Feature must be enabled

Only users with permission to edit firm settings can view or modify Active Features.

Enabling BigTime Expense Agent

BigTime Expense Agent is enabled at the organization level through Active Features.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Navigate to Settings
2. Select Active Features
3. Toggle BigTime AI Assistant to ON
4. Toggle BigTime Expense Agent to ON

Both toggles must be enabled for Expense Agent functionality to be available in AVA.

How BigTime Expense Agent Works

When enabled, BigTime Expense Agent allows users to interact with their expenses through AVA chat. Expense Agent operates within existing BigTime rules and does not bypass standard controls.

Expense Agent enables users to:

• Query their own expenses using natural language, including filtered views such as submission status or by client or project
• Create new expenses through chat-based prompts
• Modify existing unsubmitted expenses they own
• Upload, drag and drop, or paste up to five receipt files at a time to automatically generate expenses

Expense Agent actions are executed in real time and reflected immediately in standard BigTime expense records.

Permission-Based Behavior

Expense Agent respects existing BigTime permission models.

Project Access

• Users with the Log time/expenses against any project permission can create expenses against any project in the organization
• Users without this permission can only create expenses for projects where they are included on the defined project team

Unsupported Actions

• Expense Agent does not currently support deleting expenses
• Expense Agent does not currently support creating, editing, or submitting expenses on behalf of other users, even when they have permissions to do elsewhere in BigTime
• Expense Agent does not currently support viewing, creating, or submitting Expense Reports - only supports individual expenses
• Expense Agent does not currently support the creation of Vendor Expenses (coming soon!)

Review and Approval Policies

All expenses created or modified using BigTime Expense Agent are subject to the organization’s existing expense review and approval policies. Expense Agent does not alter approval requirements, routing, or enforcement.

Data Usage and AI Training

BigTime Expense Agent, AVA, and all BigTime AI capabilities do not use customer data or conversations to train large language models.

Notes and Limitations

• Expense Agent is limited to creating and editing expenses owned by the logged-in user
• Feature availability depends on Active Features being enabled at the organization level