Incentive claim verification before payout

Incentive claim verification checks the evidence behind a reward before payment. A receipt may support a sale. An invoice and photo may support an installer claim. Steve checks that evidence against your rules. Your reward or payment system decides what to pay.

Someone checks a sample before payment. The other claims pass on trust. When a dispute comes, finance must piece together what the evidence showed. It also needs to know why someone approved the payment.

To verify claims before payment, start with the evidence. Reading the receipt is one step. Does the claim support a reward under your rules? Or must someone look before the money goes out?

Which incentive claims need proof?

Promoter commission. Promoter sales verification starts with proof of purchase capture. A field-marketing agency collects receipt photos before settling payroll. Receipt verification checks those sales against the reward rules. This is a live Steve workflow. It handles thousands of receipts a month. The check must confirm a purchase qualifies and flag evidence already used in the workflow. A clear receipt still does not prove which promoter earned the commission. The program must define that link. See receipt ownership for scan-and-earn claims.

Installer and dealer rewards. Document extraction reads the invoice that backs up the purchase. A serial plate shows which unit it is. An install photo shows a visible condition. People already check these photos by hand before awarding points. Each piece of evidence has a different job. Proof of purchase and proof of installation cannot replace each other. Start with the invoice, label, and photo evidence set. Then test the needed comparisons on real examples. A photo cannot prove hidden wiring is correct or check every part of a technical standard.

Franchise bonuses. A campaign bonus can depend on photos of the agreed display or planogram. A planogram is a plan for where products go on shelves. State what must be visible, which campaign applies, and how to handle disputes. This is a proposed payment design. It does not mean Steve runs franchise settlements today. Franchise compliance audits explain the day-to-day checks. Planogram compliance bonuses explore the payment policy. Checks that match campaign material to specific product models are early access.

Subcontractor invoices. Start and end hour-meter photos could back up machine hours on a bill. Both readings must be for the same machine and billing period. A meter shows running time, not productive work. Someone must review unclear or missing evidence. Steve’s equipment-hours pairing and comparison with bills is early access. A pilot is being scoped. The hour-meter photo workflow sets out that scope. General invoice checks for contractor and dealer rewards are a separate starting point.

What a sample can miss

A person cannot carefully review thousands of claims a day. Teams with that volume may check a few percent and accept the rest unseen. Sampling limits the review work. It leaves unchecked payments at risk. Teams usually do not know how much money leaks, and that is the problem.

A sample can miss a receipt sent by two people. It can miss a site photo reused for another job. Some claims look valid alone, but the program terms do not allow paying them all. Looking only at the current file hides links to earlier claims.

Steve can detect duplicates and reused photos across a workflow’s history. This flags evidence to check against the rules. It does not always mean fraud. One invoice may validly cover several units. Two similar photos may show a corrected claim. Your reward or payment system must still decide who may claim and how much. It must also track quantities already paid.

Checking every claim does not mean approving every claim without a person. It means applying the agreed checks to each claim. Uncertain cases go to people.

When to approve, reject, or review a claim

Approve, reject, or have someone look. These are verdicts: decisions on the evidence. Agree with finance what each means before the workflow starts.

The table shows an example decision policy. The next system handles payments. Steve does not release, hold, or refuse money itself.

Evidence condition	Verdict	What happens to the payment
Required evidence is clear, passes the agreed checks, and has no open flags	Approve	Released if it also passes the paying system’s checks on who qualifies
Clear evidence fails a set rule, such as a purchase outside the allowed dates	Reject, with the failed rule recorded	Refused under the program’s policy, with a way to dispute it
Capture is unusable, or a required field cannot be read	Quality-gate refusal, retake, or review under the set policy	Wait for usable evidence or review before deciding eligibility
Evidence looks like an earlier claim, but valid reuse is possible	Have someone look	Held while a reviewer compares both claims
A field read from one item conflicts with another piece of evidence	Have someone look	Held until someone resolves the mismatch

The quality gate can refuse an unusable capture under your set policy. A field that cannot be read is not proof that the claim fails the rules. “Cannot read the date” and “date outside the campaign” need different next steps.

A reviewer needs the evidence, flagged rule, and any relevant prior claim. Steve’s review queue keeps a record of the review decision. Finance can inspect this record when someone disputes the result.

Send the verdict to your payment system

The steps are: submit evidence, check it, then decide on payment. The final system may handle payroll, supplier bills, rewards, or loyalty points. Open Loyalty is one example of a loyalty platform.

Steve accepts evidence, runs the set checks, and returns a verdict with reasons. It passes these through an API or webhook: ways for software systems to exchange data. The paying system still controls who qualifies, balances, caps, and final payment. An approved photo is not permission to skip those controls.

Write a business rule your operations team can read: “The purchase date must fall within the campaign window.” Steve’s verification rules let the team change that rule without a software release. Agree who can change it. Test it on a sample that reflects real claims before using it for payouts.

For a store-compliance or product-registration flow, start with one payment condition. Define the evidence needed and reasons for review. Set the next system’s action for each verdict. The pay-per-verdict pricing guide covers how to budget for decisions and the review work that remains.

What to measure in the first month

Measure the flow before setting targets:

• Share auto-approved: claims that pass without a person. Check these against a sample labeled by people.
• Share sent to review: cases that need attention. Check whether the queue is keeping up.
• Reasons for flags: unreadable evidence, suspected reuse, missing details, or failed rules.
• Retake rate: requests for better evidence. Check whether the new evidence resolves the issue.
• Money held back on review: the value awaiting a decision in the paying system.

Held money is not a fraud saving. Track how much is later released, refused, or still unresolved. Review decisions that were overturned too. A low review rate means little if people who qualify are refused.

Where it does not fit

Steve is not an identity-verification or bank KYC service. These check who someone is. KYC means “know your customer”; these are specialist checks governed by regulations. Steve does not offer on-premise deployment, which means running on your own servers. It does not analyze video evidence or score employees’ performance. A payout workflow checks a claim against program terms. It should not turn a disputed photo into a judgment about someone’s ability.

Bring one payment flow, its rules, and 50 real claims to a discovery call. Include accepted claims, refused claims, and the ones your reviewers argued about. We can use them to define what the evidence supports. We can also define where a person must decide.

Check every claim. Pay the ones that hold up.