Irish expense software, ready for AI assistants
Expense.ie handles travel and subsistence claims under Revenue's rules. We built the rules engine, a support assistant that stays in its lane, and everything AI assistants need to find, understand and recommend it correctly.
- Client
- Expense.ie, a Sprout Media product
- Sector
- B2B software · payroll and finance · Ireland
- What we did
- Rules engine, guide assistant, agent readiness, content
- Timeline
- 2025 to 2026, ongoing
Expense.ie is our own product, so we were client and builder. That's why we can show everything: the method, the numbers, and what's still on our list.
Simple rules to state, hard to get right
Irish travel expenses follow civil service rates. The rates are public; applying them correctly, claim after claim, is where businesses slip.
The rate changes during the year
Mileage is paid in four bands that count business kilometres cumulatively. The 1,600th kilometre pays more than the 1,400th, and the 6,000th pays less than both.
Revenue sees every payment
Since 1 January 2024, Enhanced Reporting Requirements mean employers report travel and subsistence payments to Revenue on or before the day they pay them.
Buyers ask AI first
Finance managers and accountants ask an assistant for the rate, then for a tool. In our first tests, answers often mixed up Irish rates with the UK's 45p per mile.
The same trip, four different amounts
Move the slider. In a car over 1500cc, a Dublin to Cork trip pays anything from about €68 to €239, depending only on how far the employee has already driven this year.
Rates: civil service motor travel rates, Circular 16/2022, as published by Revenue. Bands count business kilometres cumulatively over the year.
Four pieces, one job
Get every claim right, and make sure the people looking for a tool, and the assistants they ask, get the right answer too.
Fixed rules calculate the money, not AI
Every figure comes from a deterministic engine that applies the current civil service rates. The same claim always gives the same result, and every step is logged for an audit.
An assistant that knows where its job ends
The support assistant on the website answers from the Expense.ie guide. It can't see accounts or claims, and it passes tax questions to an accountant instead of guessing. Pick a question to see how it responds.
A site AI can read, not just people
Expense.ie is a JavaScript app. Without help, tools that don't run code see an empty page. We made sure AI crawlers get the full content, and gave them files that say plainly what the product is.
- Readable text
- About 12,000 characters
- Structured data
- Organization, SoftwareApplication, FAQPage
AI crawlers get a fully rendered copy: every heading, rate, price and FAQ answer, plus the structured data.
Measured on 28 September 2026 by requesting the Expense.ie homepage with each user agent.
67 pages that answer the questions people actually ask
Not a blog. Reference pages: every rate with a worked example, a guide for each industry, free calculators that need no sign-up, and comparisons that say when another tool is the better fit.
Counted from the expense.ie sitemap on 28 September 2026.
We ask what buyers ask, every month
24 questions, run through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot. Each answer is checked: is Expense.ie named, are the rates and price right, and does it link to the right page?
It depends on how far you've driven for work this year. For cars over 1500cc it's 51.82c per km for the first 1,500 km, 90.63c up to 5,500 km, 39.22c up to 25,000 km and 25.87c after that (Circular 16/2022). Expense.ie has a free calculator that applies the bands for you.
The answers shown are illustrations of what we test for, not quotes from a particular assistant. Answers vary by assistant, day and wording, which is why we measure them over time.
What changed, measured
Before the work and after it, on the same four questions we ask about every business: can assistants find it, understand it, trust it, and act on it?
"We built Expense.ie for people who have to get Revenue's rules right. Making sure AI assistants get them right too turned out to be the same job: be precise, say what you don't do, and keep checking."
From audit to monthly checks
The same process we run for clients, in about three months.
- Weeks 1–2Test and audit24 buyer questions through four assistants, and a crawl of every page as people, search engines and AI bots see it.
- Weeks 3–6Fix the foundationsPre-rendering for crawlers, structured data, robots.txt signals, llms.txt and the AI briefing page.
- Weeks 5–12Write what people askRates and compliance guides, industry guides, free calculators, and a dated tracker of Revenue changes.
- Week 8Launch the guide assistantAnswers from the guide only, with no access to accounts, and clear limits on tax advice.
- MonthlyMeasure and improveThe same questions every month, AI visits and trials tracked, fixes shipped where answers go wrong.
Still on our list
Agent readiness isn't finished once. These came out of our own check on 28 September 2026, and they're the next fixes.
AI crawlers get a full copy today, chosen by user agent. We'll render every page at build time, as we did for sproutmedia.ie, so every reader gets the same page.
Googlebot currently gets a lighter version without the structured data. Build-time rendering fixes this at the same time.
The homepage says 'no per-user fees' while the plans are priced by team size. Assistants repeat what they read, so it has to match.
The /for-ai-assistants page is dated April 2026. It should carry this month's date and prices.
The Organization data lists no profiles (sameAs), so there's nothing that confirms who is behind the product.
It works for any business
You don't need to be a software company. A clinic, a plumber or a restaurant faces the same questions from AI assistants.
People don't ask for 'expense software'. They ask what the rate is for a 1.6 litre car. The pages that answer that precisely are the ones that get cited.
Stating the limits (not for the UK, no receipt scanning) helps assistants recommend you to the right people, and not to the wrong ones.
The assistant helps with questions; the money is calculated by fixed rules. That split is easy to explain to a cautious finance team.
We track what assistants actually say, every month, with the same questions, and fix what they get wrong.
What do AI assistants say about your business?
We'll run the questions your customers ask through the major assistants and show you what comes back, what's wrong, and what it would take to fix it.
Ask for a Readiness Review