The Ultimate Guide: What to Ask Your AI for Smarter T&E Reporting | Cogent Agentic AI

From Endless Data to Instant Answers: 30 Advanced Prompts for PredictX Cogent

In today’s business travel landscape, the challenge isn't a lack of data; it's knowing what to do with it. Many T&E professionals are burdened with static dashboards and fragmented information, making it difficult to get the insights they need to drive strategic change.

At PredictX, we believe in a different approach. As our CEO, Keesup Choe, noted in an interview with BTN Group, the best disruptors "try to imagine what if this thing did not exist"—and that's exactly what we did with legacy T&E reporting. Our revolutionary Agentic AI platform, Cogent, helps you move beyond dashboards and ask questions in natural language to get immediate, actionable answers.

To get you started, we’ve compiled a powerful list of advanced prompts across key business areas. This is your toolkit to transform your travel data & analytics from a historical record into a proactive, strategic asset.

Driving T&E Savings: Proactive Cost & Spend Analysis

Cogent helps you find opportunities for savings that are often hidden in traditional reports.

• "Act as a cost optimization consultant for a global enterprise. Based on our historical T&E data, identify the top three actionable areas where we can reduce overall travel and expense spend without significantly impacting employee productivity. For each area, provide a brief rationale and suggest a concrete strategy."
• "Using our travel data from the last 12 months, calculate the total spend on car mileage for the North American region. Provide a month-by-month breakdown and compare the total spend to the same period in the previous year. Highlight any months with a significant increase or decrease in spend."
• "I am preparing a savings forecast for our air program. Please follow these steps:
  
  1. First, identify all our CH-SFO air bookings from the past 12 months.
  2. Second, assume a 50% shift to BAP pricing for these routes.
  3. Third, calculate the total potential savings based on our historical data and current pricing trends.
  4. Finally, present the total savings impact and the top 3 departments that would benefit the most from this change."
• "What is our total spend on hotel stays and car rentals for this year? Compare this to last year, breaking down the spend by month and department."
• "What are my total missed savings on air tickets so far this year? How does this compare to this point last year?"

Automating T&E Compliance: Risk Mitigation & Policy Audits

Ensure your program is always compliant by having an AI agent act as your digital auditor.

• "Act as a financial auditor for a global enterprise. Identify all non-travel expenses for the past fiscal year, break them down by category, and highlight any unusual spending patterns. Present this in a clear, exportable table."
• "As a compliance officer, provide a detailed report on the top 5 employees who spent the most on meals and entertainment in 2024. For each employee, list their total spend and the number of transactions."
• "Provide a detailed list of all air tickets over 15,000 CHF. Ensure the report includes the traveler's name, ticket number, origin, destination, department, and the amount spent on each ticket."
• "How many trips have been booked outside of our travel policy in the last 6 months? Provide a breakdown by department, highlighting the top three departments with the highest non-compliance rates."
• "What is the total leakage amount for hotel stays so far this year? If we reduced this leakage to zero, how much money could have been saved?"

Strategic Vendor Insights: Optimizing Partnerships & Negotiations

Optimize your partnerships and gain leverage in negotiations by asking the right questions of your data.

• "Analyze how our average negotiated rate for hotel stays has changed over the past three years. Identify any trends and provide actionable insights I can use in my next contract negotiation with Marriott brand hotels."
• "Compare our spend, market share, and top routings for Swiss, Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, and Brussels Airlines to AA, BA, JL, IB and AF, KL, DL, AM. Use a detailed carrier analysis table to show all relevant information for a comprehensive market share split."
• "For tickets where we are spending more than the benchmark, sum the difference between our spend and the benchmark for all tickets. Then, show me on which carriers and routes we have the highest savings opportunities."
• Act as a market analyst preparing a regional report for Western Europe. Provide a table of the top 10 hotels in Basel, Switzerland, ranked by room nights, including their spend and market share. Additionally, provide the average fare for the Best Western Delta Mannheim vs. Radisson Blue Mannheim for 2023, and compare their total spend and bookings.”
• "Who are the top rail vendors so far this year? How much money has been spent on each top vendor, and how does this compare to last year?"

Learn more about how we're transforming T&E management. Transform T&E Management with Cogent’s AI-Powered Solutions.

Sustainable T&E: Driving Eco-Friendly Travel with Analytics

Achieve your corporate Sustainability goals by using Travel Data & Predictive Analytics to make smarter, more responsible travel choices.

• "Calculate how much CO2 would have been saved if all our car travel was via electric cars for the last fiscal year. Present a month-by-month breakdown and compare it to the previous year."
• "Provide a year-over-year spend timeline for ground transport split by month and year. Identify any routes that have seen a significant increase in ground travel and suggest a reason for the trend."
• "How has my average spend on air travel vs. the benchmark changed over the past two years? Split this spend by days in advance and compare our performance to the benchmark to identify any savings opportunities from booking in advance."
• "Analyze the carbon footprint of our top 10 most traveled routes. For each route, provide a breakdown by airline, travel class, and haul type, highlighting options with the lowest carbon emissions."
• "Show me all air tickets booked in business and first class for the last fiscal year. Calculate the additional CO2 emissions from these bookings compared to economy class and present the total emissions and potential savings."

Strategic Travel Reporting & Data Consolidation

Go beyond dashboards and automate complex analysis by using prompts to build powerful reports and visualizations.

• "Provide a comprehensive overview of total travel spend, transaction volumes, and traveler counts over the past two years for a finance manager preparing a quarterly corporate travel budget review. In a professional tone, present data in a markdown table with clear year-by-year comparisons and highlight key trends in spend and transactions."
• "For the last 12 months, show me a table of the most recent air tickets traveled via United Airlines, complete with the traveler's name, ticket number, origin, destination, department, and the amount of money spent on each ticket."
• "Show me on a world map the spend by location for the current fiscal year. Split the spend by category (air, hotel, car rental) for each location and highlight the top 10 locations with the highest total spend."
• "Give me our YoY spend timeline for ground transport, split by month and year. Compare this to our YoY leakage timeline for ground transport for the same period."
• "Provide me with a detailed report on our total travel spend so far this year. Split this by month and type (air, hotel, car rental, rail) and compare our spending to last year."

PredictX’s AI Agents: Leading the Future of Travel & Expense

This approach is only possible because of Cogent’s unique platform. As our CEO, Keesup Choe, noted in a recent interview, our commitment to innovation is unwavering, with nearly 50% of our revenues invested into R&D. This focus on longevity and a startup mentality has earned us industry recognition, including our win at the 2025 Business Travel Innovation Face-Off.

Our system’s conversational intelligence provides instant access to your consolidated travel & expense data, ensuring every question you ask, no matter how complex, is answered with precision.

Discover the 6 powerful use cases for Cogent’s AI agents.

The Future of T&E Reporting: What's Next for Cogent's AI

We're continuously working to improve the platform and are already planning new features to make your travel management even more powerful. We know there are complex questions you're eager to ask, and we're building the tools to answer them.

While Cogent is getting smarter with every release, here are a few examples of questions it can’t yet answer, along with our plans for the future:

• Data Visualizations: While you can get detailed tables and summaries, Cogent can’t yet create charts.
  
  • Example Prompt: “Create me a pie chart showing…”
• Document and Knowledge Integration: Cogent can’t read or extract information from documents.
  
  • Example Prompt: “Read this information from this travel policy document.”
• Internal Knowledge Integration: Cogent is not yet able to provide insights on our internal methodologies.
  
  • Example Prompt: “How does PredictX calculate leakage?”
• Contract and Dashboard Analysis: Cogent can't yet compare contracts.
  
  • Example Prompt: “Compare these two contracts…”
• Dashboard Navigation: Cogent is not yet able to navigate to specific dashboards.
  
  • Example Prompt: “Take me to the meetings and events dashboard.”
• Advanced Analytical Reasoning: While we've expanded its analytical capabilities, Cogent is still learning how to provide complex, multi-layered explanations.
  
  • Example Prompt: “Tell me the drivers behind the average air ticket price increase in the past month on route LHR<>JFK.”

Our team is actively working on these and more to give you a more comprehensive and intuitive experience. Stay tuned for future updates that will further expand Cogent's capabilities and make your workflows even more streamlined.

FAQ on Cogent Agentic AI

Q1: What is the biggest challenge with traditional T&E reporting? 

A: The biggest challenge with traditional Travel Reporting is that it's often manual, reactive, and fragmented. Data is locked in static dashboards, making it difficult to get real-time insights and actionable intelligence needed for strategic decision-making.

Q2: How does a T&E reporting tool with Agentic AI help a business save money? 

A: By providing Travel Data & Predictive Analytics, a tool like Cogent helps businesses save money in multiple ways. It can autonomously monitor for policy breaches, identify vendor upselling, and find gaps in a travel program, all of which lead to a reduction in T&E spending.

Q3: What are the main benefits of consolidating travel and expense data? 

A: Consolidated Travel & Expense Data offers a single source of truth, giving companies a complete view of their spending across all sources. This unified data is essential for gaining actionable insights, optimizing vendor negotiations, and improving T&E policy compliance.

Q4: How does PredictX help with sustainability in business travel? 

A: PredictX supports corporate Sustainability by providing tools to track the carbon impact of travel and by offering insights that help companies manage their programs more responsibly. Its data-driven approach allows for smarter decision-making that aligns with corporate sustainability and environmental goals.

Q5: What are the key benefits of using advanced prompts with Cogent? 

A: Using advanced prompts with Cogent enables you to move beyond dashboards. You can get answers to complex, multi-step questions, perform deep data analysis, and get strategic recommendations — all in an instant. This empowers you to become a proactive and strategic T&E professional.

Transform your T&E management today. Request a trial of Cogent today.

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