Automatically Approving Expenses

You may create auto-approval rules so that expenses that meet certain criteria and comply fully with your expense policy are automatically approved in Abacus.

You may also create rules that will warn or block employees from submitting expenses or create rules that route expenses to specific Managers or Admins based on certain criteria. Click here to learn more about creating an expense policy. 

Automation Criteria

You may automate expense approval using a combination of any of the following criteria: 

• Expense Type (corporate card, virtual card, or reimbursable)
• Submitter (by individual employee names or using custom Team Fields)
• Amount
• Merchant
• Expense Category (categorized as)
• Custom Expense Fields (tagged as)

For example, if an individual pays for a budgeted monthly subscription on a virtual card, you could create an auto-approval rule to approve that specific type of expense.

Create an Auto-Approval Rule

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. Customize your auto-approval rule based on the criteria that make the most sense for your team.

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

5. Click Create Rule.

Merchant Field

The dropdown menu displays such default non-vendor merchants as Mileage, Taxi, and Parking. Aside from these options, the Merchant name field acts like a text field.

To create a new approval rule based on a merchant name, simply type the merchant's name in the field.

Once you finish typing, a prompt will appear within the field to add the typed name. Click on Add [Merchant Name] to include the merchant in the rule.

In the example below, the Merchant name is set to "Abacus."

Edit or Delete an Auto-Approval Rule

1. In your Admin sidebar, click Spend Policy.

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