The Expense Claim Workflow in ApprovalMax provides your Organisation with a structured, auditable process for submitting, reviewing, and approving employee expenses. Approved claims are automatically pushed to Xero as Bills or Spend Money transactions, depending on the expense type.
Please note: For an employee to participate in the Expense Claim Workflow and have claims submitted on their behalf, they must exist as a contact in your Xero account.
Types of Expense Claims
Every expense claim is one of two types:
Out of pocket (OOP) — for personal expenses that the employee paid themselves and needs to be reimbursed. On final approval, ApprovalMax automatically creates a Bill in your Xero Bill workflow, with the employee as the supplier.
Corporate card (CC) — for expenses charged to a company card. On final approval, ApprovalMax creates one Spend Money bank transaction in Xero for each expense line, posted against the claim's bank account.
How an Expense Claim moves through the workflow
A Requester creates an expense claim, adds expense lines (and mileage lines for out-of-pocket claims), attaches receipts, and submits it for approval.
If a review step is configured, a Reviewer checks the request and can make permitted edits before forwarding it for approval.
One or more Approvers approve or reject the claim according to your Organisation's approval policy.
Upon final approval, ApprovalMax automatically creates the relevant document in Xero, a Bill for out-of-pocket claims or a Spend Money transaction for corporate card claims.
If a claim is rejected, it is not locked or cancelled; the Requester can edit and resubmit it.
Upload receipts with My Expenses
Requesters can upload receipt photos and files directly when creating a claim, and ApprovalMax Capture uses OCR to extract key details and automatically pre-fill expense lines.
Requesters also have access to a personal receipt workspace called My Expenses, where they can upload and store individual receipts throughout the month and then group them into a single expense claim when ready.
Workflow configuration
Administrators set up the Expense Claim Workflow in Workflows & settings. Configuration options include defining who can submit claims, setting up approval steps and matrices (including routing by expense type), and configuring mileage settings.
Mobile
The ApprovalMax mobile app for iOS and Android lets Requesters capture receipts on the go, upload them to My Expenses, and submit and track expense claims from anywhere.