More Linear Approval Process

jofri

In short, our company handles the approval of expense reports opposite of how Expensify sets it up. I'll explain below, but is there a way to reverse the process so that our finance department is the first to approve an expense report from a user and then the user's manager is the final approver? I know that sounds weird, but it is how the organization has done it for years. Explanation:

Expensify Way: Employee submits expense report - it first goes to -> that user's manager, once approved - it goes to -> the manager's approver for final approval.

• This does make sense, as the final approver would be one person or department Finance, but ours is opposite

Company Way: Employee submits expense report - it first goes to -> Finance Person, once approved - it goes to -> Employee's manager for final approval.

I've been wracking my brain on it and the only way I can think of making our approval process work within the confines of the Expensify framework would to be create additional accounts (I'll call them Surrogates) based on the Employee's department and Manager/approver. If one department only had one manager/approver, then would only need to create an additional account based on that department (i.e. HR). If the department had multiple managers/approvers, then would need to create an account for each department manager/approver for which that manager's employees would submit reports to (i.e. HR-JS and HR-BN (John Smith and Bill Nelson respectively). While these Surrogates are based on the manager and if have multiple employees to approve reports, the Surrogate would actually go to, or be associated with, our Finance person. So, like this:

New way: employee/submitter - first goes to -> Surrogate HR-JS (but really the Finance person), once approved - goes to -> Manager for final approval.

But I'm not sure how our Finance person would be able to see the reports directed to each specific Surrogate and then approve them as that Surrogate so that it went for final approval to the employee's manager. Also, it creates a lot of accounts.

Any thoughts?

Lauren Schurr

Hi @jofri! Apologies for the delay in response here! The type of approval workflow you're talking about needs to be enabled by someone on the support team over here at Expensify. It's not always possible, so I'd like to direct you to sending a message into our team via the app or by emailing [email protected]. Just reference this post so our team can take a closer look at your account and get you setup correctly!

Alan_B

HI, I have exactly the same issue. Normally the Accounts department checks the expenses to ensure the VAT and GL accounts are correct prior to sending to the Manager for approval.