Approve a request
Review, approve and decline Spend requests — thresholds, the self-approval block, reminders, and the payment team.
Approval is the decision that turns a request from someone asked into the business agreed. It happens per line, it is recorded with a note, and it is never made by the person who raised the request.
The three decisions
| Decision | Effect | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Review | Moves a line from Awaiting review to Awaiting approval. It is a triage step, not an approval. | The Spend list, on selected rows. |
| Approve | Clears the line. It can then be posted, converted, or collected. | The request page, or the list in bulk. |
| Decline | Rejects the line. The requester is notified and the reason stays on the record. | The request page, or the list in bulk. |
Reviewing is optional in practice — a request can be approved straight from Awaiting review. What it buys you is a separation between someone has looked at this and someone has agreed to it.
From the request page
Approve and Decline sit at the top of a request that is still awaiting a decision. They act on every line still awaiting one — lines already approved or declined are left exactly as they are. If nothing on the request is still pending, you are told so rather than anything being changed.
The status you see afterwards comes back from the server, not from the screen. If an approval rule means your decision was recorded but the line is not yet approved, the page will say so.
Deciding several at once
On the Spend list, tick rows and a bar appears: Review · Approve · Decline · Post · Delete. It is shown to administrators only.
Choosing Review, Approve or Decline opens a confirmation that lists exactly what you are about to decide — request number, purpose, amount, current status — with one optional Note, visible to the requester. The note is cleared every time the dialog opens, so a decline reason can never leak into the next approval.
| In the dialog | It tells you |
|---|---|
| Review | Marks the selected items as reviewed and moves them on to approval. |
| Approve | Approves the selected items. Where an approval rule needs more approvers, your vote is recorded. |
| Decline | Declines the selected items. The requester is notified. |
Selections survive turning the page, so you can gather rows across several pages and decide them in one go.
Approving a request you raised is refused outright — approval is a second pair of eyes. The only exception is a Super Administrator, so that a business with one person in it can still function. Declining your own request is allowed: that is how a requester withdraws something they no longer need.
Approval rules — when one approver is not enough
By default a single approval clears a line. Approval rules raise that bar above an amount you choose.
A rule reads: Payment Request at or above 50,000 needs 3 approvals. It has three parts:
| Part | Options |
|---|---|
| Workflow | All workflows, Payment Request, Requisition, or Advance. |
| From amount | The threshold. The rule applies to any line at or above it. |
| Approvals needed | 2, 3, 4 or 5 distinct approvers. |
Rules live on the Payment Team tab of the Spend list and are managed by administrators. Adding one takes effect on the next decision; removing one is confirmed first and tells you exactly which rule is going.
Where more than one rule matches a line, the one with the highest threshold the amount clears governs — never the most permissive. Under rules "at or above 1,000 → 2 approvals" and "at or above 10,000 → 3 approvals", a line of 20,000 needs three, not two.
What an approver sees while a rule is in force
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Approval recorded (1 of 2) | Your vote counted. The line stays awaiting approval until the threshold is met, and the confirmation says how many items are still short. |
| Approval · 1 of 2 recorded | On the request page, under the stage marker — the requester can see it is moving even though it is not yet approved. |
| Approved | The last required approver has voted. Only now can the line be posted, converted or collected. |
Votes are counted per distinct approver. The same person approving twice counts once — a threshold of three genuinely means three people.
A line below every rule's threshold is approved by a single approval, exactly as before. Rules are a ceiling on risk, not a tax on everything.
Reminding approvers
Remind approvers appears on the request page — in the header menu and on the Where it is card — for as long as the request is still live. It disappears once the request is declined, paid, converted or retired, because there is nobody left to chase.
It does not fire blind. It first shows you the active approval team — name, email and role — and tells you plainly how many people will be emailed. If the team is empty, it says No approvers set up and asks you to add people before sending anything.
Anyone who can open the request can send a reminder, including the person who raised it.
The payment team
The Payment Team tab of the Spend list is the roster of people who move requests forward.
| Role | Authority over requests |
|---|---|
| Reviewer | May review a request. |
| Approval | May approve or decline a request. |
| Payer | May post a request as paid. |
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name · Email | Who they are. |
| Role | Reviewer, Approval or Payer. |
| Type | Whether they are on the team for payment requests or for pay schedules — the two rosters are separate. |
| Date added | When they joined the team. |
| Status | Only Active members are emailed and counted. |
The roster can be searched and exported to CSV. New adds a member, and only an administrator can do it — membership grants authority, so adding somebody to this team is an administrative act.
Administrators and Super Administrators may review, approve, decline and post regardless of the roster. The roster is what governs everyone else, and it is what decides who gets emailed on a decision or a reminder. In today's screens the decision buttons themselves are shown to administrators — a rostered approver who is not an administrator is on the team for notifications and for the rule count.
Related
- The request page — where a decision is made
- Track requests — deciding several at once
- Post a payment — what happens after approval
- Convert a request · Retire an advance