How to use Approval Routing

In Abacus, you can set up approval routing logic so that expenses are routed to an approver based on amount, member, Team Field, Expense Field, expense type (corporate card or reimbursable), and category. The standard approval workflow allows you to assign both an Administrator (final approver) and an optional Manager, who can give expenses a “first pass” before they makes their way to the final approver.

You can also create rules that will warn or block employees from submitting expenses or that auto-approve expenses based on certain criteria. Learn more about creating an expense policy. 

Why Should You Use Approval Routing?

Your team should use Approval Routing rules if you'd like certain expenses to be routed to the Inbox of a particular Manager - or Managers - prior to Admin review. With approval routes, you’re able to add additional checks and balances to your approval workflow, based on the expense criteria that you select. The primary use cases for Approval Routes are to:

• Reassign certain expenses to a new manager
• Add additional managers to certain expenses for additional review

Approval routing rules can be used to assign any number of reviewers to expenses, based on criteria that you can specify. Once these rules are in place, expenses will be routed to the specified approver first. When an expense is waiting on this approval, it will appear in the Pending section for other Admins.

Please Note: If you prevent people from approving their own expenses, make sure you don't create an Approval Route that routes someone's expenses to themselves. 

Please also Note: If the approver is both a manager and an admin, his or her approval will be final and the expense will just require one layer of approval.

Once an expense is approved by a Manager, it can no longer be re-assigned. The expense will follow the approval route in place at the time of Manager approval, regardless of changes made to an expense post-approval.

Manager Approval Routing

In Abacus, expenses are routed to a member’s primary manager for review before going to the final approver by default if there are no approval routing rules that apply to the expense.

If there are approval routing rules that apply to the expense, by default, the expense will not route to the member's manager before following the approval routing rules.

However, you have the option to turn on manager approval routing, which ensures that all expenses are first routed to a member's manager before being routed according to any additional approval routing rules.

To turn on this option:

1. In your Admin sidebar, click Spend Policy.

2. Scroll down to the Auto Approval section.

3. Toggle the Always assign expense to a user's manager prior to routing option to Yes.

Create an Custom Approval Route

Follow these steps to create an auto-approval rule:

1. In your Admin sidebar, click Spend Policy.

2. Scroll down to the Auto Approval section and click Add.

3. Select an Approver who expenses of a certain type should be routed to before sending to the final approver.

4. Customize the criteria for which expenses make sense to go to that approver.

5. Click Preview Rule to review the rule based on the settings you selected.

6. Click Create Rule.

Prioritize the Order of Approval Routing Rules

You might have expenses that meet the criteria of two routing rules. When that is the case, the expense will go to both approvers, following top-down logic.

To change the order of the approval routing rules, move the rules by clicking and dragging the drag icon to the left of the rule.

For example, a $3,000 expense categorized as entertainment with the rules below would first go to James Manager to be approved and then be routed to Wade Executive for approval. 

Editing and Deleting Rules

Follow these steps to change or remove an auto-approval rule:

1. In your Admin sidebar, click Spend Policy.

2. Scroll down to the Approval Routing section and click Edit   or Delete  .