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Business Settings

Expense Claims Approvals

Setup an automated approval flow for employee expenses, ensuring their transactions are efficiently verified and approved based on criteria you have pre-defined.

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Opting In or Out

To use the new approval process for expense claims, you will need to Enable new approval process before you can create an approval workflow.

Enabling the new approval process will make the new feature visible, and hide the old functionality.

With the new approval process, submitters will now see an ‘approvals’ tab in the expense claims section of Dext, along with buttons to ‘request approval’ in order to submit their expense claims.

Users who have been nominated as an approver, will have the ability to approve or reject expense claims from the approvals tab in the expense claims space.

Returning to old Functionality

If you would like to return to the old approval process for expense claims, you can disable the new functionality using the toggle in approval settings.

Opting out of the new expense claims approval process will hide the new feature functionality, and restore the old.

Your approval workflows will not be removed when you opt out, and you can opt back into the new approval process at any time.

It’s important to note that when opting out, any expense claims that are currently in an approval flow will be returned to the expense claims inbox and will need to be submitted for approval again.

Roles & Permissions

Admin users: have full permission to create and edit approval workflows

All other types of users: to create and edit approval workflows, all other types of users will need to have the ‘Manage other colleagues’ documents‘ toggle enabled, which is off by default.

Creating an Expense Claim Approval Workflow

Note: You must have an Admin role in Dext to configure approval workflows. See more about roles & permissions here.

To create an approval workflow:

  1. Go to Business settings in the sidebar navigation, then Approvals

In the old Dext experience, you can access Approvals via My Profile, then Approval Settings

  1. Click the Create workflow button
  1. Enter a name for your workflow, and add a description if necessary. Ensure that in the APPLY APPROVALS TO section, Expense Claims is selected in Item type.
  1. Create your approver stages, and select who needs to provide approval and when
  1. Choose whether you want to switch the workflow on after saving, and whether you want to enable auto-publish upon final approval
  1. When ready, click Save workflow to complete the setup

Keep in mind:

  • You can have up to 5 approval stages.
  • At each stage you can select a manager, or one or more people who can provide approval. If one of those people approves the request, the others don’t have to.
  • You can choose both admin and standard users to approve requests. Approvals do not rely on users being the role of Expense `approver. 
  • If you select Manager, the approval will automatically be sent to the submitter’s manager. If a manager hasn’t been set up, the submitter won’t be able to request approval. An admin has to set up the manager for them in My team.
  • Each workflow is linear, meaning you create one approval route per workflow. 
  • You can create up to 20 different workflows.

Editing an Approval Workflow

To edit an existing approval workflow:

  1. On the Approvals settings page, simply click the workflow you wish to edit
  1. You can then change the the flow matching criteria and stage details, along with turning off auto-publish or the workflow itself 
  2. Click Save workflow to save your changes.

Removing an Approval Workflow

To delete an existing approval workflow:

  1. On the Approvals settings page, find and open the workflow you wish to delete
  2. Click Delete workflow if you want to permanently remove the workflow entirely
  3. If you want to temporarily pause a workflow, consider Switching the workflow off
  4. Click Confirm to delete the workflow

What happens when a workflow is deleted?

  • Any items that are currently in an approval workflow, will be returned to the submitters inbox.
  • Already approved items will not be affected.

Reviewing Items for Approval

To review items that require approval:

  1. When you have items awaiting approval, go the Costs, then Expense Claims
  2. You can approve an item directly from the list, or by opening the item and clicking Approve
  3. If you wish to reject an item you are reviewing, click Reject. A document that is rejected will be moved back to the submitters inbox.

Keep in mind

  • If you’re an admin, you can see and perform actions (like Approve, Reject and Edit) on other people’s items that need approval.
  • If you want users to only see their own items, make them a standard user.

Managing Notifications

To choose when you want to be notified about approvals:

  1. Open User settings, and head to Email notifications
  2. Under Approval email notifications you can configure your desired preferences