Expense Approval
Expense approval lets someone claim an expense and someone else sign it off before it is treated as settled. It is available on both plans.
Nothing forces you to use it. Every expense starts as a draft and stays there until somebody submits it, so a sole trader who has nobody to ask can ignore this page entirely.
The Lifecycle
An expense moves through five states:
| State | What it means | Who moves it on |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Nobody has claimed it. Every expense starts here | The claimant submits it |
| Awaiting approval | Submitted, waiting for a decision | Someone with expense:approve |
| Approved | Signed off. The expense is now locked | Someone with expense:reimburse |
| Rejected | Sent back with a reason | The claimant revises it |
| Reimbursed | The money has gone back to the claimant. Final | — |
What moves where
| From | Action | To | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draft | Submit | Awaiting approval | The claimant |
| Awaiting approval | Withdraw | Draft | The claimant |
| Awaiting approval | Approve | Approved | Someone else, with expense:approve |
| Awaiting approval | Reject (reason required) | Rejected | Someone else, with expense:approve |
| Rejected | Revise | Draft | The claimant |
| Approved | Record reimbursement | Reimbursed | expense:reimburse |
Anything not listed is refused. You cannot approve a draft without submitting it first, and Reimbursed is final.
Submitting an Expense
- Open the expense
- In the Approval card, click Submit for approval
Creating an expense is what claiming one means, so there is no separate permission to submit your own. Until somebody rules on it you can click Withdraw, which returns the expense to draft and removes it from the approval queue entirely.
Approving or Rejecting
Someone with the expense:approve permission opens the expense and clicks Approve or Reject.
A rejection needs a reason. The claimant sees it on the expense, so say what needs fixing — “no receipt attached” is more useful than a rejected claim with no explanation. The Reject button stays disabled until you have written something.
You cannot approve your own claim
This is a rule about people, not about permissions, and it cannot be turned off. An owner holds every permission in Gee Ledger and still cannot approve an expense they submitted themselves. If you are the only person in the business, approval is not a workflow you can complete — which is the honest answer rather than a setting to find.
Revising a Rejected Expense
A rejected claim is not finished. Click Revise to return it to draft, fix whatever was wrong — usually attaching the receipt — and submit it again.
This is deliberate. Raising a fresh expense instead would lose the record of the first attempt, which is exactly what an approval trail exists to keep.
Recording a Reimbursement
Once approved, someone with expense:reimburse clicks Record reimbursement and chooses how the money went back: bank transfer, cash, cheque, card, or other.
Reimbursed is the final state, and the only one that records money actually leaving the business rather than a decision about it.
Approved Expenses Are Locked
Once approved, an expense cannot have its line items, currency, pricing or total changed, and it cannot be deleted.
An approval is evidence that somebody checked the numbers. Editing them afterwards would mean the sign-off attested to figures nobody saw, and deleting the expense would leave the approval trail pointing at nothing.
To correct an approved expense, reject it back to the claimant first. That reopens it for editing and keeps the history of what happened.
Adding a receipt number is still allowed — it changes nothing that was approved.
Permissions
| Permission | Owner | Manager | Cashier | Viewer | Accountant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Create and submit an expense | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — | — |
expense:approve | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — |
expense:reimburse | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — |
A cashier can record expenses and submit them, and holds neither of the approval permissions. That is the point of the role: a claim they raise waits for somebody else.
Finding What Needs Attention
On the Expenses list, use the approval filter to show only what is Awaiting approval — or Not submitted, Approved, Rejected, and Reimbursed.
A badge appears on each expense from the moment it is submitted. Drafts carry none, because in a business that never uses approval that badge would appear on everything and mean nothing.
Related
- Transactions — Recording expenses
- Team Members — Roles and permissions
- File Attachments — Attaching receipts to a claim