How to customise approvals within ExpensePlus
The approvals module in ExpensePlus is highly customisable.
- You can customise whether purchase approvals are required based on category, type, or amount (see customising approvals below)
- You can set ExpensePlus to require secondary approval / dual approval for purchases over a specified amount (see customising approvals below)
- You can prevent users who are related from being able to approve each other's purchases (see the Approvals FAQ to find out how to do this)
- You can enable users to approve purchases on behalf of budget holders (see the Approvals FAQ to find out how to do this)
- You can turn approvals off altogether (see customising approvals below)
This article covers the many different ways you can customise the approvals within ExpensePlus.
To find answers to commonly asked questions, please see this separate help guide article.
Customising Approvals
Within the system settings screen, click the 'edit' button to the right of the 'Approvals' section.
Within the 'Edit Approvals Settings' popup that appears, you will find many of the customisation options. Details for each can be found in the points below.
Approvals - by default, this is 'enabled (all categories)'. We recommend leaving approvals enabled for all categories, as this means that budget holders will be able to keep track of budget spend in live time. This also provides accountability and means that all purchases will have visibility by at least two people. Whilst you can disable approvals altogether, it's typically not recommended to do this. A further option is available enabling you to set whether approval is enabled/disabled by category (again, this is typically not recommended, but if you do select this option, you will then need to go to the category settings screen to enable/disable approval for specific categories).
Low-Value Purchases - rather than the budget holders needing to approve all purchases, you can set a minimum threshold for approval. If this is set, then purchases with a lower value than the threshold set will auto-approve. As approval in ExpensePlus is quick and easy, with most purchases being approved by budget holders at the click of a button from the morning email they receive, many organisations leave this setting set to 'approval required'. This means that budget holders get full visibility of purchases for their budget area. Where a low-value purchase threshold is set, typically this would be set at £10 or less.
Secondary Approval - If your organisation has a policy requiring purchases over a specified amount to be approved by two people, then secondary approval is a great way to manage this within the ExpensePlus process flow.
Top Tip: We'd recommend you set up at least 3-4 users as secondary approvers, as ExpensePlus doesn't allow either the purchase submitter, a spouse/relative of the primary submitter, or the primary approver of a purchase to provide secondary approval for it (see the Approvals FAQ to find out how to do this).
Whilst you can set the threshold for secondary approval as zero (which will mean all purchases then require dual approval), we typically wouldn't recommend this, as purchases already go through 3 or 4 other checks within the ExpensePlus process flow - with the receipt check, primary approval, payment setup, and payment authorisation.
Supplier Payments - by default supplier payments require approval, but you can change this. However, whether a purchase is made by card payment, or by invoice payment, or someone pays then claims the money back via an expense claim there is a strong case that this shouldn't negate the need for the purchase to go through an approval process (as it's your organisation's money being spent in any case). Furthermore, if invoices to pay and business card purchases skip the approval stage, this limits budget holders' ability to keep track of and manage their budget expenditure, as they will only be getting to see and approve a subset of the overall purchases in their budget area.
Purchases submitted by category approver - if the submitter of a purchase is the budget holder, ExpensePlus will automatically allocate the purchase to the backup approver of that category. If no backup approver is set OR the backup approver is the spouse/relation of the submitter, by default, the purchase will need to be approved by another user who has the permission to 'approve on behalf of another user' in their user role (see the Approvals FAQ to find out how to do this). We'd recommend that you leave the permission for 'purchases submitted by category approver' set to 'Approval Required by backup approver OR someone else'. You can alternatively change this to 'Assigned to backup approver but skip if no backup category approver set'.
Note: if a purchase doesn't require primary approval (e.g. because it's recorded to a category that has been set as not requiring approval OR because it's been recorded as an invoice payment or business card purchase and supplier payments have been set to not requiring approval), but secondary approval is enabled the purchase amount is greater than the threshold set for this, then the purchase will go through the secondary approval step (even though it may have skipped the primary approval stage as approval wasn't required based on the criteria set)