How to Set Up Expense Approval Workflows

Why expense approvals stall or get skipped

Most small companies start with one rule: the owner approves everything. It works until the owner is travelling, the team grows, or a stack of small claims sits for a week because nobody else is allowed to approve a taxi fare.

The usual reaction is to relax the rule informally — the office manager approves small things, finance approves the rest, and urgent claims are paid first and approved later. Now nobody can say who actually approved a given claim, and high-value spending slips through on the same path as coffee receipts.

A workflow written down in the system fixes both problems. Small claims go to one stage, large ones to more stages, specific categories can have their own route, and every decision is recorded against the claim with the approver and their comment.

Why this happens

• Every claim goes to the same person regardless of amount or category.
• Approvals happen in chat or email, so there is no record of who signed off.
• Nobody covers approvals when the approver is away, so claims pile up.
• There is no rule for what happens when an approval sits untouched for days.

Biznsbook addresses this through approval workflow stages, amount- and category-based routing, approver delegation, approval escalation in the Expense Management module, which posts to the same general ledger as the rest of the ERP when Accounting is licensed.

Expense problems rarely come from one big mistake. They come from many small claims handled slightly differently each time. A single record per claim, with every decision and payment attached to it, removes that variation.

Step-by-step: Set Up Expense Approval Workflows

Written for finance teams and office managers running staff spend — employees file claims, approvers sign them off, and finance pays and posts them, all inside the Biznsbook Expense Management module.

1. Decide your approval rules. Write down which amounts need which sign-off — for example anything above a set amount needs a second, finance stage.
2. Create the stages. Under Expense Settings → Approval Workflow, add a stage for each level with its number, approver role, and minimum and maximum amount. Category-specific routes can be added through the workflow configuration API.
3. Choose who approves each stage. A stage can name specific approvers, or be left to a role. Named approvers (or their delegates) are the only people who can approve that stage; a role stage can be approved by anyone in your company with that role.
4. Pick parallel or any-of. With several named approvers, require all of them to approve, or let any one of them complete the stage.
5. Set escalation. Give the stage escalation hours and a target role. The escalation job moves approvals that sit past that time to the target.
6. Approve from the queue. Approvers open Pending Approvals, which lists claims waiting on them, including ones covered by a delegation. Approve can carry a comment; reject needs a reason.
7. Cover absences with delegation. Under Settings → Delegations, an approver names a delegate, the dates, and optionally one category. The delegate can act on their behalf during that window.
8. Let final approval post the claim. When the last stage approves, the claim is counted against its budget and, with Auto-Post on Approval on, posted to accounting.

Review results after the first full monthly cycle. Adjust roles, mappings, or approvals where the same exception repeats.

Inside Biznsbook, the Expense module has its own step-by-step Guide (Expenses → Guide) covering claims, approvals, advances, budgets, recurring expenses and payments. This article focuses on the business process behind those screens.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Mistake 1: Every claim goes to the same person regardless of amount or category. Repeating this each month usually shows up first in an expense report finance cannot reconcile to the ledger.
• Mistake 2: Approvals happen in chat or email, so there is no record of who signed off. Repeating this each month usually shows up first in an expense report finance cannot reconcile to the ledger.
• Mistake 3: Nobody covers approvals when the approver is away, so claims pile up. Repeating this each month usually shows up first in an expense report finance cannot reconcile to the ledger.
• Mistake 4: There is no rule for what happens when an approval sits untouched for days. Repeating this each month usually shows up first in an expense report finance cannot reconcile to the ledger.

Each of these shows up as a difference between the expense reports and the ledger. Fix the process on the claim record rather than with manual journals.

Best practices that hold up as you scale

• Decide your approval rules — Write down which amounts need which sign-off — for example anything above a set amount needs a second, finance stage.
• Create the stages — Under Expense Settings → Approval Workflow, add a stage for each level with its number, approver role, and minimum and maximum amount.
• Choose who approves each stage — A stage can name specific approvers, or be left to a role.
• Pick parallel or any-of — With several named approvers, require all of them to approve, or let any one of them complete the stage.
• Set escalation — Give the stage escalation hours and a target role.

Keep the process inside the claim record. Every approval, payment and settlement recorded on the claim is one less manual journal to explain at month-end.

How Biznsbook supports this workflow

approval workflow stages is part of Biznsbook Expense Management and follows the claim through the same record — submission, approval, payment and posting — rather than living in a separate spreadsheet. With Accounting licensed, each journal is posted as a balanced double entry under its own reference, so a payout or reversal can never be mistaken for the original expense.

amount- and category-based routing is part of Biznsbook Expense Management and follows the claim through the same record — submission, approval, payment and posting — rather than living in a separate spreadsheet. With Accounting licensed, each journal is posted as a balanced double entry under its own reference, so a payout or reversal can never be mistaken for the original expense.

approver delegation is part of Biznsbook Expense Management and follows the claim through the same record — submission, approval, payment and posting — rather than living in a separate spreadsheet. With Accounting licensed, each journal is posted as a balanced double entry under its own reference, so a payout or reversal can never be mistaken for the original expense.

approval escalation is part of Biznsbook Expense Management and follows the claim through the same record — submission, approval, payment and posting — rather than living in a separate spreadsheet. With Accounting licensed, each journal is posted as a balanced double entry under its own reference, so a payout or reversal can never be mistaken for the original expense.

Access is permission-based: Expense Manager holds approve, categories, budgets, settings and reports; Expense Approver can approve and view reports. Every company user can still file their own claims and advance requests, and company admins see everything.

Suggested implementation timeline

1. Week 1: Set up categories with GL accounts and the Expense Settings default accounts, then configure approval workflow stages.
2. Week 2: Pilot with one team: file real claims, approve them and record payments in Biznsbook only.
3. Week 3: Check the postings: approved claims, employee payable and advances should match the expense reports.
4. Month 2: Roll out to all staff, assign Expense Manager and Expense Approver roles, and retire the spreadsheet.
5. Ongoing: Monthly review using testing a workflow before you rely on it.

Related guides and help articles

Start with tracking business expenses efficiently, then read managing business budgets for spend limits by category and department.

The Expense Management overview lists every capability, and Biznsbook vs Expensify compares an in-ERP expense module with a standalone app.

Industry: professional services, HR and people teams.

Metrics to track monthly

• Approved claims waiting for payment, and their total
• Average days from submission to final approval
• Outstanding employee advances past their expected settlement date
• Spend against budget by category for the month

Start with three metrics; trend direction matters more than a single point-in-time snapshot.

Spreadsheets and email vs Biznsbook Expense Management

Compare a typical email-and-spreadsheet expense process with Biznsbook approval workflow stages and the related Expense capabilities.

Testing a workflow before you rely on it

After setting up stages, submit a few test claims at different amounts and in different categories, and check the stage each one lands on and who sees it in Pending Approvals. Then reject one, edit it and resubmit it, to confirm it restarts from the first stage. Ten minutes of testing catches a missing amount range or an approver who cannot see the claim long before a real claim stalls.

Write the rule into your expense policy so employees, approvers and finance follow the same steps, and revisit it each quarter.

Frequently asked questions

How this differs by industry