Approval steps define who approves expense claims in your Organisation and under what conditions. You can create multiple approval steps to represent different authorisation levels, and each step can be configured independently.
Approval conditions can be set by expense type, meaning you can route out-of-pocket and corporate card claims to different Approvers if needed.
Adding approval steps
In the Expense Claim Workflow, click + Step to add a new approval step. You can add as many steps as your Organisation requires. Each step is configured independently with its own Approvers and approval conditions.
Configuring an approval step
Click on Add an Approver to add Approvers to the step.
Once Approvers are added, set the Approval condition and choose whether Any of or All of the Approvers must approve for the step to be completed.
To set a deadline for the step, click the Clock icon.
By default, no deadline is set. You can set a deadline in hours or days, counted from the date the expense claim was submitted or from the date it enters the specific approval step.
Setting up the approval matrix
To define the conditions under which each Approver is matched to an expense claim, click the Matrix icon on the approval step to open the Approval matrix.
Each Approver has a row in the matrix.
For each row, you can configure the following conditions:
Editing permission — whether the Approver can edit fields on the claim during approval
Requester — the user who submitted the claim
Expense type — Out of pocket or Corporate card
Employee — the employee for whom the claim is submitted
Supplier — the supplier on the expense line
Account — the Xero account on the expense line
Tax — the tax rate on the expense line
Amount — the total claim amount in Organisation currency
Region — tracking category
Bank account — the bank account on the claim header (relevant for corporate card claims)
For most conditions, you can select Any, Matches, or Does not match.
For Amount, the options are Any, Over or equal to, Under, and Between.
For example, you could configure Jessica Bell to approve only when the account matches Sales, and the amount is under 500 GBP.
Adding alternate rules
For each Approver, you can add additional routing rules by clicking the three dots next to their name and selecting Add an alternate rule.
This adds a second row for that Approver with its own set of conditions, matched independently from the first. For example, Jessica Bell could approve when the account matches Sales, and the amount is under 500 GBP, or, via an alternate rule, when the region matches North.
Adding a Default Approver
At the bottom of the approval matrix, click on Add the default approver to designate a fallback Approver for the step.
The Default Approver is automatically added to the step when no other Approver is matched by the matrix conditions, ensuring no claim is left without an Approver
Please note: If any Approver in the matrix is set to Any across all conditions, a Default Approver is not applicable for that step, as there will always be a matched Approver.
Configuring the editing matrix
You can further configure the Approval matrix to grant certain Approvers editing permissions in the Editing matrix, accessible by clicking on Editing matrix next to an Approver.
This defines which fields the Approver is permitted to edit on a request during their approval step. You can use this to allow approvers to make minor corrections, such as updating an account code or tax rate, without needing to reject the claim and send it back to the Requester.
To grant an Approver permission to edit a field, tick the Allow to edit this field checkbox for that field.
Once enabled, you can further configure the permission by specifying what changes the Approver can make.
For each field, you can select:
Any — the Approver can change the field to any available value
Can change to — the Approver can only change the field to a specific value or set of values.
Cannot change to — the Approver can edit the field freely except for the specified values.
For example, for the Expense type field, you could allow an Approver to change it to Corporate card only, or prevent them from changing it to Out of pocket.
Once you have completed the editing permissions configuration, click on Save.
Then, save the entire Approval matrix for the approval step by clicking on Done.
With the approval step and matrices now set up, click on Activate/Update the workflow.