Submit and approve expenses

An expense claim moves through a simple workflow: Draft, then Submitted, then Approved. Nothing reaches your books until a claim is approved.

Submit a claim

On a draft expense, choose Submit expense. You can submit your own claims; owners and admins can submit anyone's. While a claim is Draft it stays fully editable - choose Edit on the expense.

Approve or reject

Approving is for owners and admins - see User permission levels.

• To approve, open a submitted expense and choose Approve, then confirm with Approve expense. Approval is final: an approved expense can no longer be edited or reopened.
• To send it back, choose Reject and enter a reason. The claimant sees the reason on the expense, can Edit it to fix the problem, and can submit it again. Reopen turns a rejected claim back into a draft.

If your organisation is connected to FreeAgent, each approved expense is pushed there automatically. Owners and admins see a Pushed to FreeAgent badge on the approved expense, with a Push now or Retry action if a push has not landed.

Skip the submit step

If you do not need the two-step workflow, a company setting collapses it:

1. Open the account menu and choose Settings.
2. In the Expenses card, tick Allow expenses to be approved directly from draft (skip the submit step) and save.

When the setting is on, Submit expense is replaced by Approve on draft expenses: an owner or admin can approve anyone's draft, and a team member can approve their own. Leave it off to keep the standard submit-then-approve workflow.

Mileage claims follow exactly the same workflow - see Mileage claims.