Getting Started with Spend Requests
With Spend Requests, you can implement a pre-approval process for company spend across your organisation. Spend requests help you enforce policy, stay on budget, and ensure every purchase is reviewed by the right people — reducing surprises later.
How to Activate Spend Requests
To get started:
- Log in to Airwallex
- Go to the Spend Requests page
- Click Activate, or select a pricing plan to proceed
Configuring Your Approval Workflow
Requests are routed based on your company’s approval policy. You can configure your approval policy by going to Settings > Spend Approvals > Spend Requests.
You can create customised, multi-conditional approval workflows for your organisation’s spend requests based on:
- Amount - the total amount (or annualised total amount for recurring requests)
- Purpose - the type of request (e.g. travel, marketing, subscriptions)
- Entity - the employment entity of the user
- More conditions (department, location) will be added soon!
How to Approve Requests
From the Spend Requests table, you can click into any request to see:
- Request details
- Amount
- Comments and notes
Then choose an action:
- Approve – Confirms the request
- Reject – Denies the request (you must specify a reason for rejection)
- Comment – Ask for clarification or request changes
How to Create Cards from Requests
Once a request is fully approved, the status will change to “Pending Card Creation”.
You can click “Create Card” to issue a card from the request. All of the details from the request will be pre-filled on the card creation page, so you simply need to review and click “create” to issue the card.
You can also adjust the card’s limit and controls if required.
Once a card has been issued for a spend request, the status will change to “Complete” and you can view the card details. The user will also receive a notification to let them know that their request has been approved and that they can start to use their new card.
Tips for Managing Requests
- Make sure your approval workflow is set up to your company’s policies
- Use filters to quickly take action on requests that are pending your approval or awaiting card creation
- Add comments for clarity, especially when rejecting
Frequently Asked Questions
Can requests be edited during or after approval?
No - if an employee needs to modify their request, it will need to go back through the approval process again.
How should I choose what type of card to issue for a request?
By default, subscriptions and marketing requests will default to Company Cards, while travel and other requests will default to Employee Cards. You can learn more about our cards here.
Can I temporarily stop my employees from submitting requests?
If required, you can deactivate Spend Requests by going to Requests > Settings > Disable Spend Requests.