Skip to main content

Approve a pending manager or director decision

An amount-tier decision resolves a pending Approval Status. It is separate from moving the expense lifecycle to APPROVED and separate again from posting the journal.

Procedure​

  1. Open the exact DRAFT expense and read its amount, Paid By, User, vendor/account and evidence.
  2. Inspect the manager/director requirement banner.
  3. With the matching authority, choose Approve (Manager) or Approve (Director).
  4. Confirm the prompt and wait for the response.
  5. Verify Approval Status APPROVED and the recorded approver/time where available.
  6. An authorised user can then perform the separate lifecycle Approve action.

Permission and state distinctions​

Manager approval needs expense.manager-approve and the matching pending manager state. Director approval needs expense.director-approve and a director requirement. A different tier's permission does not automatically resolve the pending one through these separate commands.

The User selected in Manager is a reference, not a dedicated approval assignment. The code does not require the reviewer to match that User or differ from the creator/claimant. Any required independence must be followed through the approved internal process; this is not a built-in two-person control.

Example: A GBP 6,000 draft requires the manager tier. Jonah reviews and decides it with the proper authority. Farah sees the requirement resolved but still needs expense.status.update to move the expense from DRAFT to APPROVED. No payment or journal is created by Jonah's decision alone.

Recovery​

If the pending state changed, reload rather than repeatedly approving. Another reviewer or a genuine amount correction may have changed it. A missing button can mean tier mismatch, missing authority or a non-DRAFT browser banner, not a routing failure.

After material same-amount edits, the current code can retain the earlier decision. Re-review according to the organisation's process rather than treating old metadata as proof that all new details were approved. Use Rejection for pending decisions that should not proceed.