Expense Approval
Your approvals, your rules.
What changes when you build this
The gaps you're living with today,
and what this tool fixes.
Problems
- Expense requests arrive via email, Slack, and spreadsheets — finance has no single queue to work from
- Managers approve requests without seeing how much their team has already spent this month
- Receipts get lost between submission and audit, creating compliance gaps during reviews
- Reimbursement requests sit unapproved for 5+ business days because routing rules live in someone's head
- Month-end reconciliation takes hours because approved expenses don't flow cleanly into the ledger
Solutions
- One approval queue where every expense request lands, with status visible to submitters and approvers in real time
- Each approver sees cumulative team spend alongside the request, so approvals happen with full budget context
- Receipts attach directly to the expense record — no more digging through email threads during audits
- Routing rules are explicit: thresholds, department, and approval chain defined once, enforced automatically
- Approved expenses reconcile continuously against the budget, not in a month-end scramble
What the data model looks like
Refine generates this table structure from your
prompt. Edit columns, types, and relationships after.
100%
Mistakes to avoid
These are the failure patterns teams hit most often
when building this.
Missing receipts discovered at auditFix: Block status transitions to 'Approved' until a receipt file is attached to the record.
Missing receipts discovered at audit
Fix:Block status transitions to 'Approved' until a receipt file is attached to the record.
Approval routing breaks when managers changeFix: Tie routing rules to roles and departments, not individual user IDs.
Approval routing breaks when managers change
Fix:Tie routing rules to roles and departments, not individual user IDs.
Duplicate expense submissionsFix: Add a uniqueness check on amount + date + submitter within a rolling 7-day window.
Duplicate expense submissions
Fix:Add a uniqueness check on amount + date + submitter within a rolling 7-day window.
Threshold bypass via split submissionsFix: Flag when the same submitter files multiple expenses in the same category within 48 hours.
Threshold bypass via split submissions
Fix:Flag when the same submitter files multiple expenses in the same category within 48 hours.
Stale requests sitting unapprovedFix: Add SLA timers that escalate to the next approver after 3 business days of inaction.
Stale requests sitting unapproved
Fix:Add SLA timers that escalate to the next approver after 3 business days of inaction.