Manage Your Approval Workflow
Policy admins can invite new people to the company expense policy and also edit their approval workflow. To invite new people and set their approval work, click the “Invite/add people” button on the Expensify dashboard. Or to edit the approval workflow of existing people, visit Settings > Policies > [Policy Name] > People. Can’t find Settings > Policies? Make sure to upgrade your account!
“Submits to” and “Approves to” have special meanings in Expensify. Employees who submit expense reports will only have the “Submits to” field defined. Because approvers receive reports and forward these up the approval chain, ONLY APPROVERS have a set “Approves to” field.
Invite Users to Your Policy
Users can be added by going to settings > policies > [select policy] > and then scrolling down to the People section. Select ‘Invite’to share the policy with other users.
What to do when you select invite:
- Input the email address of the user being added
- Decide if this user is an Administator
- Input who the user will submit reports to
- ‘Forwards to’ is only necessary if this user approves and forwards for further approval
Expensify will then send an invite to the user letting them know that they have been added to the policy. The welcome message will be present so feel free to let them know any specifics.
Example Workflows
3 Personal Approval Chain Example
In this example, the Employees submit their expense reports to Managers, who then approve and forward the reports to Accounting. Managers submit their own personal expense reports directly to Accounting.
| Report Submitter | 1st Approver | 2nd Approver |
|---|---|---|
| Employee | Manager | Accounting |
| Manager | Accounting | None |
Managers have Accounting in their “submits to” field because that is who they submit their personal expense reports to. Managers have Accounting in their “Approve to” field because that is who they forward the reports they have approved for further approval.
Employees have no one in their “Approves to” field because they are only submitters, not approvers.
4 Person Approval Chain Example
| Report Submitter | 1st Approver | 2nd Approver | 3rd Approver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employee | Manager | CFO | Accounting |
| Manager | CFO | Accounting | None |
| CFO | Accounting | None | None |
CFOs have Accounting in their “Submits to” field because that is who they submit their personal expense reports to. CFOs have Accounting in their “Approves to” field because that is who they forward the reports they approve to.
Managers have CFOs in their “Submits to” field because that is who they submit their personal expense reports to. Managers have CFOs in their “Approves to” field because that is who they forward the reports they approve to.
Employees have no one in their “Approves to” field because they are only submitters, not approvers.
Removing Employees from Policy
To remove an employee from your company expense policy, check the box next to their name and click “Remove”.
This will not delete their Expensify account, it will just remove them from the policy. Only the employee can delete their own Expensify account.