Kardex gains global visibility and smarter control with Rydoo Smart Audit

Spending hours reviewing expenses manually is a challenge global companies often face, especially when their team travels around the world. Tediously translating receipts from Korea or Finland manually is a must to check them against company policy. Still, it can lead to out-of-policy claims slipping by unnoticed. 

This used to be Kardex’s reality. The global intralogistics leader is undergoing a company-wide digital transformation, including implementing SAP S/4HANA. As part of the digitalisation process, the team quickly understood expense management as an area needing stronger oversight. As an international infrastructure with multiple branches, each with specific compliance standards, enforcing policies consistently quickly became a challenge.    

Kardex needed a smarter way to gain control and global visibility of employee spending. The solution? Bring AI into the mix. 

Expense reviews at Kardex relied heavily on random sampling. Teams had to interpret and enforce policies across diverse local frameworks, from different per diem allowances to tipping customs. 

Although the group-level policy was clearly communicated, enforcing it consistently across multiple jurisdictions remained challenging. The sheer volume of exceptions and local nuances meant some errors, misinterpretations, or non-compliant claims could have gone unnoticed due to the limits of a manual process stretched across multiple jurisdictions. 

Kardex turned to Rydoo Smart Audit for a low-effort, high-impact solution, allowing the team to shift from reactive sampling to proactive control. 

The system uses AI to automatically analyse every expense, detecting and flagging out-of-policy items — from incorrect claims and duplicates to prohibited purchases — in near real-time. 

“Catching non-authorised purchases isn’t always straightforward” Dino Merico said. “Receipts don’t clearly say they’re for cigarettes — they just show a brand name. It’s easy for a human to miss. Smart Audit recognises these purchases and flags them automatically.“ 

The turning-point feature? Instant translation of receipts. “Managers in Switzerland can now understand expenses submitted in Korea or Finland, without copy-pasting into external tools”, Dino recalled. “It was a simple yet powerful enabler of global control.” 

Kardex adopted a phased, test-and-learn approach. Initially, the team enabled specific policy checks in selected branches. Once validated, they expanded globally. The ease of deployment required no developer involvement, accelerating adoption. 

Some of the benefits the team has experienced with Smart Audit so far include: 

• Automatically translated receipts for faster, more accurate manager approvals; 
• Real-time alerts when alcohol spending exceeds policy threshold; 
• Early detection of duplicates and mismatches with the receipt information; 
• Simplifies submitting, approving and controlling expenses, making the process easier for the whole team.

“On top of detecting non-compliant spend, Smart Audit teaches employees to do the right thing from the start“, Dino Merico added. “This makes our job much easier.”

Today, Kardex’s finance team runs high-quality, efficient audits focused on exceptions rather than routine claims. Smart Audit frees them from hours of manual random checks, enabling more strategic oversight. 

“Before, I would spend hours doing random checks. Now I can focus on the exceptions, not the noise.” 

For Kardex, Rydoo Smart Audit represents a shift from time-consuming manual checks towards strategic and automated financial control. It simplifies compliance for local teams and provides global visibility without adding complexity.