Expense Approval Workflows

What is this page about: This page explains how expense approval workflows decide who reviews a submitted expense and in what order, how Light's default workflow behaves, how to build your own approval steps and conditions in the workflow editor, and what a manager sees and does when reviewing, approving, or rejecting an expense.

# On this page

• Understanding approval workflows
• Default approval workflow
• Setting up approval workflows
• Manager approval process
• Filtering your approval queue
• Related articles

An expense approval workflow decides who reviews a submitted expense, and in what order, before Light reimburses it. A workflow can be a single manager approval, or a chain that runs from manager to finance to an executive.

# Understanding approval workflows

An approval workflow defines:

• Approval steps: How many approval nodes a submission passes through (1, 2, or 3+)
• Approvers: who reviews at each step. Pick specific users or groups, the requester's manager, or the manager of the previous approver
• AI agent review: Light can review expense reports against your expense policies and auto-approve compliant ones
• Conditions: When different approval paths apply (e.g., approvers vary by amount or entity)

Most organizations use manager approval: Employee submits, manager approves, Finance processes reimbursement.

# Default approval workflow

Light includes a default expense workflow, named Expense reimbursement, that runs automatically whenever an expense report is submitted:

• Review expense report (AI agent review): Light reviews the expense report against your expense policies
• Compliant: The expense report is approved automatically
• Non-compliant: The expense report is sent to the inbox for manual review

You can customize this workflow in the visual editor.

# Setting up approval workflows

# Opening the workflow editor

1. Navigate to Settings → Workflows (Open in Light →)
2. Open the default expense workflow, Expense reimbursement (the one triggered when an expense report is submitted), to see its visual editor
3. Use the toolbar at the bottom to add Action or Condition nodes
4. Connect nodes to define the approval flow
5. Click Publish to activate your changes. New submissions follow the most recently published version of the workflow, so publish once you're happy with the layout.

# Adding approval steps

1. In the visual editor, add an approval node

2. Specify Approvers on the node. Light routes an approval one of four ways:

   • User: name an individual directly
   • Group: any member of the group can approve
   • Manager of requester: Light routes to the requester's manager
   • Manager of previous approver: Light routes to the manager of whoever approved last

3. Mark each approver as required or optional

4. Each approval node branches into if approved and if rejected paths. Connect each one to the next step

5. To vary approvers by amount or other criteria, route submissions into different approval nodes using condition nodes

# Conditional approval rules

For complex scenarios, add condition nodes:

1. In the visual editor, add a Condition node

2. Set the condition (IF), for example:

   • If Amount > $500
   • If Entity = [specific entity]
   • If a custom property has a certain value

3. Connect each branch, including the "else" default path, to the appropriate approval step

4. Conditions are evaluated in order, and the first match determines the path

# Manager approval process

# Receiving expense for approval

Managers receive notifications when employees submit expenses:

1. Email notification: "New expense from John ($245) awaits your approval"
2. In-app notification: Alert in Light interface
3. Slack/Teams notification (if enabled): Message in chat app

Click notification to open expense for review.

# Reviewing an expense

1. Click the notification or navigate to Tasks (Open in Light →)

2. View expense details:

   • Receipt: the receipt document itself, viewable inline
   • Vendor/user, entity, and accounts: who's being paid, from which entity, and the pay-from and send-to accounts
   • Amount and currency
   • Invoice number and dates
   • Description

3. Review for:

   • Legitimacy: Is this a real business expense?
   • Policy compliance: Does it meet company policy?
   • Reasonableness: Is the amount appropriate?
   • Accuracy: Does the description match what was purchased?

4. Click Approve or Reject

# Approval actions

Approve Expense:

1. Click Approve. The approval applies straight away, in a single click.
2. Light queues the expense for payment.
3. Employee gets notification: "Your expense was approved"

Reject Expense:

1. Click Reject
2. Optionally add a comment explaining why
3. Click Confirm
4. Employee is notified with your comment, if you added one
5. Employee can reset the rejected expense report, which moves its expenses back to draft so they can revise and resubmit

# Filtering your approval queue

On Tasks (Open in Light →), filter the list of expenses waiting for your approval by Owner, Category, or Deadline.

# Related articles

• Expense Management Overview
• Reimbursement Workflow
• Expense Policies

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