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- Expense Reporting System
- Features
- Approval workflow
Approval workflow
Approval workflow routes a submitted report through the people responsible for its business purpose and policy compliance. Manager reviews direct reports, Finance Reviewer verifies evidence and approved amounts, and a high-value report requires the configured Controller decision before final Finance approval. Expense approval steps record the assigned actor, decision, comment and report revision. An employee can follow progress without gaining the authority to approve their own claim or change a completed reviewer action.
OverviewMy Submitted×
Expense Reporting System · Approval workflow
New
My Submitted
Expense reports
| Report number | Report title | Submitted at | Total amount | Approved amount | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ER-16534 | Denver client workshop travel | 31 Oct | 3,836.97 | 11,507.52 | Submitted | |
| ER-82134 | May regional sales visits | 12 Oct | 45,950.92 | 45,125.65 | Approved by mgr | |
| ER-43114 | Quarterly planning offsite | 30 Oct | 29,956.88 | 29,841.27 | Approved by finance | |
| ER-91233 | Field service trip to Reno | 01 Nov | 24,046.83 | 24,374.49 | Reimbursed | |
| ER-13021 | Supplier audit in Spokane | 23 Oct | 21,495.40 | 6,445.86 | Submitted |
6 of 6 records
Denver client workshop travelExpense reports · ER-16534
SubmittedSubmitted at31 Oct
Total amount3,836.97
Approved amount11,507.52
What you can do
Start with the manager’s business review
Reports Awaiting My Approval contains submitted reports within the manager’s direct-report scope. The manager reviews purpose, line amounts and policy findings, then approves, rejects with a reason or holds the report for clarification. This step accepts the submitted business case; it does not authorize arbitrary line-level disallowances or payment release. Another team’s reports and restricted card fields remain outside the manager’s scope. A missing or inactive manager must route through the organization’s configured exception path, never an automatic approval by the submitter.
Complete every required decision
A high-value threshold adds a Controller step to the current report revision. Controller Decisions Pending gives that actor the relevant queue. Finance review can finish only after the required prior decisions are complete. The Finance Reviewer verifies receipts, handles permitted findings and records line-level approved amount and Disallowance. Open blocked findings prevent progression. Approval complete reflects all required decisions by permitted actors for the same revision; it is a prerequisite for the accounting and reimbursement handoffs, not a field an employee can set to skip review.
Preserve the history when work changes
A held, rejected or recalled report keeps its original submission and decision evidence. When the employee materially changes the amount, payment method, policy basis or supporting facts, create the next submission revision and reroute the necessary decisions. Do not let an approval for an earlier report version authorize a changed claim. Delegation records who acted and under which authority, and cannot turn a self-approval into a valid decision. Review notifications and deep links open the scoped task; a message arriving in an inbox does not grant extra permissions.
What your team sees
- Reports Awaiting My Approval. Open the related work within your assigned scope.
- Reports Awaiting Finance. Open the related work within your assigned scope.
- Controller Decisions Pending. Open the related work within your assigned scope.
What it keeps track of
Data model- Expense reports
- The submitter’s report header. One report aggregates many expense lines for a single trip, project, or pay period. Lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → approved by mgr → approved by finance → Reimbursed; with branches Held and Rejected. Reimbursed is set when the downstream Payroll or AP cycle confirms payment.
- Expense lines
- The line grain. One row per receipt / per per-diem day / per mileage trip. Carries the GL coding, project costing, approved amount (set by the approver — may differ from Amount when a partial disallowance applies), and payment method (out of pocket vs corporate card) that drives the reimbursement branch.
- Expense approval steps
- The audit trail of approver actions on the report. One row per step in the chain — Manager, Finance Reviewer, optionally Controller for high-value. Each step records who approved / rejected / held, when, and what they wrote in the comment.
- Policy violations
- One row per breached policy rules row per expense line. The
policy-violation-flagandfraud-pattern-detectionworkflows write these. Violation count on the parent report rolls up. Severity governs the submission gate — Block prevents the submitter from advancing the report. - Receipts
- The supporting documentation — phone snap, PDF, emailed receipt forwarded to a capture inbox. OCR runs on upload and backfills the parsed fields; the submitter (or auto-fill on high-confidence parse) writes the canonical values onto the expense line.
- Employees
- A scoped employee identity directory synchronized from the organization identity or HR source. This reference supports ownership and approval attribution; it does not add payroll or HR administration. Role membership alone never grants access to every directory field. External auditors and portal users receive only the identities needed for their granted work.
Who uses it
Permissions- Manager
- Owns the direct-report decision.
- Controller / CFO
- Handles required high-value decisions.
- Finance Reviewer
- Completes policy and amount review.
- Employee
- Responds to returned work.
Set up Expense Reporting System your way.
Start free, then use Proto to change fields, steps and approvals before your team goes live.