How do I reject a purchase awaiting approval?

There (deliberately) isn't a systematic way to reject a purchase awaiting approval because this really needs to be done via a conversation, not via a system.

At the point of submitting a purchase for approval, in most cases the submitter will have either:

• spent the organisation's money already e.g. on a business card (in which case you can't reject it), OR
• placed an order with a supplier, therefore having given an indication of intent, OR
• they have spent their own money (in which case they really need someone to explain to them in person why they aren't going to be paid back).

Expense Claim

In the case of reimbursement, if you are not happy with the purchase, usually in the first instance you might consider allowing the claim to go ahead, but make it clear you won't pay for this type of purchase in the future.

If you do want to outright reject the claim, then once you've spoken to the person, anyone with Finance Team user access can simply click on the purchase, and in the bottom left, click the 'delete' button. This will deactivate the purchase.

Business Card Purchase

If the purchase was a business card purchase then we'd recommend you don't delete it. The money will come out of your bank account/card account anyway, and if you delete it you will end up having to re-add it again at bank matching.

Instead, you should ask the person to repay the money themselves if you feel this is appropriate. When the repayment appears on your bank statement, match this as an 'expense repayment'. This will appear in your accounts as a negative expense, which will net against the original expense. This is covered in this help guide article.

Changing the purchase details

If the issue is simply that the wrong fund or category has been selected, anyone with Finance Team user access can simply update this by clicking on the purchase.

To help you better understand the Approvals module as a whole, please visit the module overview page here.