Washington State University (WSU) is a premier public research institution, serving the state of Washington with 13,500 employees and 25,000 students. As an R1-level university, WSU's mission demands continuous innovation, requiring an operational foundation that supports leading-edge research and education. In a higher education landscape where leaders are pushing for greater efficiency and strategic resource management, WSU is committed to being a leader in innovation.
The institution-wide buy-in for AI initiatives required WSU’s leadership to adopt a pilot program that utilized AI innovations, while providing financial outcomes, and positively impacting the institution’s culture.
Driving continuous innovation in research administration.
While WSU successfully retired its paper-based workflows during the 2021 Workday implementation, the university continues to pioneer process enhancements that move beyond basic digitization. Like many large-scale research institutions, WSU’s finance, Accounts Payable (AP), and travel services teams historically managed high-volume, manual review cycles. Given the inherent complexity of travel expenses—where every itinerary is unique—identifying non-compliant entries or duplicate submissions through manual spot-checks presented a persistent challenge to institutional oversight.
Mitigating risk through AI-enhancements.
The historical reliance on manual data verification made achieving 100% audit coverage an operational impossibility. This forced administrative staff to dedicate significant capacity to reviewing low-risk, high-volume documentation—an arduous process that diverted expertise away from strategic financial analysis and critical risk mitigation.
By integrating Workday Expense Protect, WSU is leveraging AI to further decrease vulnerability to erroneous expenses. This initiative represents a strategic shift from reactive checking to proactive, AI-enhanced stewardship, ensuring that the university’s financial resources are protected with a level of precision that manual processes alone cannot achieve.
Our business officers are excited to have this powerful tool in place. And they are asking for more.
Executive Director
Leveraging AI to modernize expense auditing.
To refine institutional expense oversight, and improve processes, Washington State University (WSU) transitioned a portion of its manual review process to Workday Expense Protect. The university launched a six-month pilot program to evaluate the system’s AI-driven risk insights. To ensure a controlled assessment, WSU initially restricted security access, allowing the internal project team to rigorously monitor the platform’s scoring accuracy.
The proof of concept was instantaneous. Within hours of go-live, the system demonstrated 100% accuracy by flagging two duplicate expense reports that would have likely been reimbursed under previous manual workflows. Gerik Kimble, Executive Director, states, "Our business officers are excited to have this powerful tool in place. And they are asking for more."
Institutional stewardship and fiscal integrity.
The rapid realization of value through the Workday AI platform allowed WSU to transition from manual oversight to an automated, risk-based governance model. By configuring business processes to route high-risk documentation automatically, the university demonstrated a clear "proof of concept" for AI-driven modernization to institutional stakeholders.
The integration of Workday AI has delivered quantifiable outcomes across three strategic pillars:
Financial Integrity
Elimination of Duplicate Spend: In the first six months alone, WSU identified and prevented over $20,000 in duplicate expenses. This represents direct "hard-dollar" savings by intercepting errors at the point of entry, thereby eliminating the administrative burden and high cost of fund recovery.
Comprehensive Risk-Based Auditing
WSU achieved 100% audit coverage by leveraging AI to evaluate every expense report submitted. This ensures total compliance with state regulations and reinforces the university’s commitment to rigorous financial oversight.
Operational Efficiency
Optimized Audit Thresholds: The proven reliability of Workday Expense Protect allowed the university to increase the manual audit threshold to $1,500. By delegating lower-value transactions to machine learning, WSU has effectively reclaimed administrative capacity, allowing the finance team to dedicate their expertise to high-complexity, high-value reports.
Cultural Transformation
Shift to Proactive Compliance: Beyond the metrics, this initiative has fostered a culture of proactive modernization. By delivering immediate feedback to end-users through automated routing, the university has streamlined the correction process and demonstrated the tangible benefits of embedding AI into the institutional workflow.
Driving grant compliance and institutional excellence.
The enhanced security and automation provided by Workday’s AI allows the WSU audit team to pivot from manual, repetitive verification to high-impact administrative functions that support the university’s broader mission.
Reclaiming Administrative Capacity
By automating routine reviews, the audit team reclaimed 160 hours annually. Allowing staff to shift their focus toward high-value strategic initiatives.
Accelerated Reimbursement Cycles
The implementation of Workday Expense Protect led to a 6-day reduction in reimbursement turnaround times. By automating the review of lower-threshold expenses, Workday has significantly enhanced WSU’s staff and administrative experience, ensuring that those supporting the university’s research mission are reimbursed with greater speed and efficiency.
Elevated Grant Compliance
This transition ensures that grant-funded expenditures are monitored with 100% digital precision, safeguarding the university’s reputation with federal and private sponsors while fostering a culture of fiscal excellence, without the need for additional resources to handle the administrative burden.
We have observed a quantifiable decrease in duplicate submissions.
Business Systems Analyst
Cultivating digital fluency: AI-driven behavioral change.
The successful deployment of Workday Expense Protect has served as a catalyst for broader AI adoption across the university. Beyond the technical benefits, the platform has introduced a heightened level of "system awareness," sparking a cultural shift toward proactive compliance. Employees are increasingly "self-checking" submissions, resulting in a sustainable reduction in duplicate and non-compliant expenses. As Kelsey DeMacon, Business Systems Analyst notes, “We have observed a quantifiable decrease in duplicate submissions as the platform reinforces best practices, effectively shifting employee behavior toward greater fiscal accuracy.”
Evolving work: From transactional processing to strategic decisions.
The tangible success of this initiative has built significant institutional confidence, paving the way for the next generation of AI-enabled tools. By leveraging a unified Workday ecosystem—spanning Human Capital Management (HCM), Financial Management, Payroll, Grants, Procurement, and Adaptive Planning—WSU is uniquely positioned to execute a comprehensive AI strategy.
This integrated approach allows the university to move beyond manual data entry and toward high-level data synthesis. The success of Workday Expense Protect has provided the empirical evidence needed to expand AI initiatives, ensuring that WSU continues to deliver enhanced strategic value and operational excellence across all administrative functions.