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Admin Guide: Spend Approvals (Expenses, Bills, Requests, Purchase orders)

Table of Contents

Overview

This article is a guide to using Airwallex multi-conditional Spend Approvals, applicable to Card requests and limit increases, Card expenses, Reimbursements, Bills, and Purchase Order requests.

Please note that Transfers and Vendors do not follow this approval framework.

Airwallex's Spend Approvals are rule-based, allowing you to customize highly specific rules to route your spend items to the relevant approvers.

To view and manage them, navigate to Settings > Spend, use horizontal tabs to choose a domain, e.g Cards, and scroll to the approval workflow in the page.

How do I build approval rules?

There are two components to each approval rule: conditions and actions. If the conditions for a given rule are met, the actions from that rule will apply to the spend item.

First, select “Edit workflow” to enter the edit mode. Here, you may add, remove or reorder rules. Select "Add rule" in the workflow. Then, you will be prompted to give this rule a name (optional) and describe any conditions you would like to apply. Current available conditions include:

  • Airwallex conditions

    • Amount: Dollar-based threshold (total)

    • Employee fields: Department, Location, Entity (GEM customers only), User. If you select multiple values within a given employee field, they are joined by OR logic.

    • Card type

  • Accounting provider conditions: Specific accounting values. If you select multiple values within a given accounting field, they are joined by OR logic.

    • If you are not seeing your accounting values, please navigate to the Connections page and ensure you have enabled values with your desired fields

  • No condition: Alternatively, you may select no condition at all, in which case the rule will apply to all expenses or bills. This is useful for a simple, blanket control.

To build highly specific rules, you may use more than one condition. In this case, all conditions must be met for the rule to apply. 

Next, you will set the actions to apply when conditions are met:

  • The first dropdown determines if this rule will require approval, or automatically approve this item.

  • A single rule may have one approval step or multiple approval steps executed sequentially.

  • An approval may call for either any of the chosen selections to approve or all of the chosen selections to approve. This is an important distinction:

    • "Any of" requires only a single user from this step to approve

    • "All of" requires all users in this step to approve. Please note that if you use "all of" with a Dynamic approver or Role, it will require approval from all users with this assignment.

  • You have the option of 3 data types to insert into your rule:

    • Dynamic approvers: Routes to approvers according to your user management configuration

      • Manager: Routes to the user's manager to approve

      • Department head: Routes to the user’s department head to approve

      • Location head: Routes to the user’s location head to approve.

      • Budget owner: Routes to the corresponding budget owner to approve.

    • Roles: Routes to users with this role to approve

    • Individual users: Routes to the individual user(s) selected

  • Grow and Accelerate customers can optionally route card expense and reimbursements approvals to their expense policy agent, and free their team from manual reviews. Follow our dedicated set up guide here.

How do my rules apply?

For a given Spend item, Airwallex will scan all of your rules and add approval actions from any and all rules with conditions that have been met. If multiple rules apply to a Spend item, Airwallex will add the approvers of each rule.

Example rule setup:

  • Rule 1: Card expenses less than or equal to $50

    • Condition: If Amount is < or = 50

    • Actions: Require approval from Helena

  • Rule 2: Card expenses greater than $50

    • Condition: If Amount > 50

    • Actions: Require approval from Jamie

  • Rule 3: Travel rule

    • Condition: If Expense Category = Travel

    • Actions: Require approval from Admin

Please see the illustration below to demonstrate the approval flow for a $100 expense where Expense Category = Travel:

image.webp

How do I reorder my rules? Why would I need this?

When in the edit state, you can reorder rules using the up and down arrows next to each of your rules. This is used to determine the order in which approvers are added to a workflow. 

This is useful if you have a desired sequence for your approval actions, but it does not change which approvers are added (they will be added regardless of the order).

What happens if none of my rules apply?

By default, your workflow has a backup rule, which serves as a safeguard in the event that no other rules apply.

What are department and location heads?

Department and location heads are dynamic approval values, used to route spend items from the relevant departments or locations to the proper owners. This is commonly used to represent budget or regional owners in approval flows.

How do I use department and location heads in approval flows?

Department and location heads may only be used in Airwallex Spend Approvals; they are unavailable for transfer or vendor approval workflows. They may be used as dynamic approval steps in approval rules. The specific approvers triggered by a department or location approval step depend on the department or location that the employee submitting the expense belongs to.

Admins may assign multiple department heads to an individual department. In larger organisations, this is recommended to speed up approvals and prevent individual employee bottlenecks. In the event that the submitting employee does not belong to any department or location, and department or location heads are triggered as an approval step, Airwallex will fall back to require any admin’s approval in place of the department or location head for that step.

Example setup: 

Marketing department heads Sally, Max
Engineering department heads Jacob, Jack
Singapore location head Jacob

 

Marketing department employees Jackson, Julian, Mits
Engineering department employees Kyler, Lian
Singapore location employees Julian, Kyler, Lian

Approval rule 1: For all expenses, require any department head approval 

Approval rule 2: For expenses above $100, require any location head approval

Scenario 1: Kyler submits a $50 expense, triggering one approval step

  • Approval required from Jacob or Jack (Department heads for Engineering)

Scenario 2: Julian submits an expense for $200, triggering two approval steps:

  • Approval step 1: Approval required from Sally or Max (Department heads for Marketing)
  • Approval step 2: Approval required from Jacob (Singapore location head)

What if an approval step calls for a dynamic value but the submitter does not have an assigned manager?

  • This can occur if the submitter does not have a manager, department, location, or they are part of a department or location without any assigned heads.

    The outcome varies by product:

    • For card expenses, reimbursements, and requests, it will route to any admin for approval instead
    • For bills, it will be blocked and require the submitter to recall, update the workflow or add a manager, and resubmit

Advanced settings

There are two available advanced settings, listed below Expense and Bill approval workflows:

  • Submitters can approve their own items: If enabled, if a user is an eligible approver for their own spend item, they may approve it. If disabled, they will be blocked from doing so.

  • Approvers only need to approve once: Future steps requiring the same approver are automatically approved

If you disable self-approval, we recommend ensuring that your rules do not result in blocked workflows, where the only available approver is the user who submitted it.

By default, Airwallex skips duplicate steps.

  • This only applies to steps where the user is the only available approver in more than one step.

  • If the user is required once and then later included in a step with other users, the second step will not be skipped. This default cannot be disabled.

What happens if I'm both the submitter and the only assigned approver?

This depends on your advanced setting, particularly: Submitters can approve their own items.

  • Enabled: you approve your own item as usual.

  • Disabled: for card expenses, reimbursements, and requests, it will route to any admin for approval instead. For bills, it will be blocked and require the submitter to recall, update the workflow, and resubmit.

What about itemised spend items with different line values?

This FAQ is only relevant if you have rules based on accounting data. If you only have amount-based rules or rules that apply to all expenses, this is not relevant.

For expenses or bills with split accounting allocations, Airwallex uses the line item with the highest value to determine the approval flow. Specifically:

  • Card expenses: Use the accounting allocations from the highest value line item
  • Reimbursement reports: Use the accounting allocations from the highest value reimbursement
  • Bills: Use the accounting allocations from the highest value line item

What if I don't want any approval steps required?

In this case, set your conditions to reflect the desired scenario without approval steps, then select "No approval required" in the approval section of the rule.

You must ensure that no other rules with approvers apply in this scenario. If this rule is triggered alongside a different rule that requires approver(s), they will still be added.

Can I edit approval workflows for expenses or bills post-submission?

Not at this time, but this functionality is coming soon.

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