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Expense Approval Software

Approval workflows, built around you

Claims move through the right people automatically and get approved from wherever they are, expense approval software built to fit the way your teams already work.

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Trusted by finance teams at

  • National Education Union
  • Edinburgh Science
  • Greenwoods
  • Zakka Multitec
  • Crimson
  • 4.9/5

Nothing gets stuck

Delegation and mobile approval mean claims keep moving even when an approver's away.

People step in only where it counts

AI-driven value-based routing auto-approves low-risk claims and escalates the rest.

Approve from anywhere

Act on claims from the app, an email, or the User Copilot, without opening a laptop.

How a claim moves through approval

A typical claim, from submission to sign-off:

  1. 1

    Submitted

    The employee submits a claim from the app, WhatsApp, Teams, or email.

  2. 2

    Checked with Smart Audit

    AI reviews the claim against your policy, VAT rules, and history, and approves, rejects, or escalates it with reasons attached.

  3. 3

    Routed to named approver

    The claim goes to the claimant's line manager stage automatically.

  4. 4

    Escalated if above threshold

    Claims above the set value automatically move to a director or senior finance approver.

  5. 5

    Approved via mobile or the User Copilot

    The approver reviews and decides from the app, email, or the User Copilot, wherever they are.

Build your own approval chain

Multi-level and tiered approval workflows

Most expense claims need more than one sign-off, so our expense approval software custom multi-level workflows move a claim through as many stages as your policy needs.

  • Build workflows by team, role, or region: a sales team's approval chain doesn't have to match finance’s.
  • Add as many tiers as you need, all sitting in the same workflow.
  • Each stage can go to a named approver that always follows the claimant's current manager.
  • Edit a workflow any time with changes applying straightaway to every team it's assigned to, no rebuild required.
  • Centralised approval across linked organisations, for groups running more than one legal entity.

Route by risk, not by default

Value-based and line-manager approval routing

Not every claim needs the same scrutiny, so Smart Audit, our AI-driven auditor, checks claims against your rules and routes them accordingly

  • Set thresholds by value: claims under a set amount with a receipt can auto-approve, cutting the queue for routine, low-value spend.
  • Route by line manager first, with finance added as a second stage for oversight.
  • Anything Smart Audit can't resolve on its own passes into your existing approval process, rather than getting stuck.
Approval queue
Stage 1 Stage 2 Finance

Jonny Dowell

Claim 145

£199.39

11 February 2025

  • Meeting

    Mileage

    Modified 6%450 miCO2 124 kg

    £112.50

    VAT £0.00

  • M&S

    Meals and drinks

    Duplicate expenseIncomplete

    £26.80

    VAT £0.00

  • 2 Knives Bar and Kitchen

    Meals and drinks

    Approval 1 of 2Event to London, 191 mi

    £48.10

    VAT £8.01

  • Tamworth Burger King

    Missing category

    IncompleteWeekend

    £11.99

    VAT £0.00

Smart Audit

Rejected Duplicate expense

2 Knives Bar and Kitchen

Event and client meet, 307 mi, 9 hrs

£20.00

VAT £8.01

  • Receipt read and matched to the card line
  • VAT receipt present, £8.01 reclaimable
  • Same merchant, date and amount as claim 145, line 3

Escalate the exceptions

Director-level approval thresholds

Set a value threshold on any approval flow, and claims above it route to the next tier automatically, typically a director or senior finance approver.

  • Works well for organisations with a handful of high-value claims each month, sitting alongside a high volume of routine expenses.
  • No one needs to manually reassign a claim once the threshold's set.

No claim left behind

Delegate approval authority during holiday cover

Approvers set an out-of-office period and delegate their approvals to another named approver, so claims don't stall until they're back.

  • Delegation is set by the approver themselves, for a defined date range.
  • Delegated approvals show up in the delegate's own approval queue, not as a separate inbox to check.
  • Longer-term cover, such as parental leave or a secondment, is better handled by overriding the approval flow at team or individual level.
Approval stages

Jonny Dowell

Claim 145

£48.10

11 February 2025

  1. Stage 1

    Jonny D

    Approved
  2. SB

    Stage 2

    Sophie B

    Pending
  3. SS

    Finance

    Susannah S

    Pending
Out of office

Enable Out of Office

Delegate Expense Approval to (includes existing approvers only)

Choose a delegate...

Only During the Following Date Range: 17 Feb 2025 to 27 Feb 2025

Decisions from a phone, not just a desk

Approve anywhere, with the context you need

Approvers get full visibility of pending claims and can approve or reject from anywhere (mobile, web, Teams, WhatsApp, or the User Copilot) with receipts, alerts, history, and Smart Audit reasons sitting right next to every line.

  • Approve, reject with a reason, send a claim back to the claimant, or send a reminder, individually or several at once.
  • Auditors get their own read-only role, so they can see everything without being able to approve or edit a thing.
  • Audit exports carry a timestamp for each stage, so measuring cycle times and spotting bottlenecks is far more straightforward.

Approval notifications

Act from email, the User Copilot, or Teams, not just a laptop

Approvers picking expense approval software often ask whether they'll need to log in constantly to stay on top of it; with Capture Expense, they don't.

  • Get an instant alert the moment a claim needs your input, or set your own digest (hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly) so you're not notified line by line.
  • Approvers act on claims from the app, an email, or the User Copilot, without opening a laptop.
  • Copilot messages in Teams or WhatsApp link straight through to the claim that needs a decision.
Microsoft Teams
How many claims do I have outstanding?

Capture Expense

You have a total of 490 outstanding claims.
How many are in the approval section?

Capture Expense

You have 183 claims currently in the approval section.
Message
Draft expenses
  • 2 Knives Bar and Kitchen £48.10
  • Tesco £12.40
  • Amazon £31.99
Type
Incidental expense
Category
Meals and drinks
VAT
£8.01
Amount
£48.10
Submit Edit Split Notes
Capture Expense has had such a meaningful impact on how we manage expenses, it's basically cut everything in half. Approvals run on their own, and the mobile app means people can submit on the go.
Lauren Miles, HR & Finance Business Partner, Source EV

  • 3x

    faster approvals

  • 50%

    reduction in admin time

Source EV

Set up an approval workflow in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Build your tiers

    Add the stages you need: auditor, line manager, finance, director.

  2. 2

    Set your rules

    Add value thresholds and policy flags so routine claims move fast and exceptions escalate.

  3. 3

    Assign to teams

    Apply the workflow by team, role, or region, and override it for individuals where you need to.

It’s all in the results

Connect your approval process to the tools you already use

No new platform to learn; our expense approval software helps you to approve wherever your team already works.

  • Microsoft Teams
  • WhatsApp
  • Email

Integrates with 50+ systems. Don't see yours? See all integrations

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Can we set up multi-level approval workflows?
Yes. Workflows can include multiple tiers, such as auditor, line manager, finance, and director, configured by team, role, or region.
How do I choose the right expense approval software for my organisation?
It's worth thinking about how your approval chains actually work day to day: how many tiers you need, whether thresholds should escalate automatically, and how much you want approvers to handle from their phone versus a desktop. Capture Expense is built to flex around those choices rather than force you into one fixed setup.
What happens to approvals when an approver is on holiday?
The approver sets an out-of-office period and delegates their approvals to a named colleague for that time, so claims route to the delegate instead of waiting.
Can approval thresholds escalate to a director automatically?
Yes. Value-based thresholds route claims above a set amount to the next approval tier, such as a director, without manual reassignment.
Can managers approve expenses from their phone?
Yes. The Capture Expense mobile app lets managers review and approve or reject claims from any location, with push notifications when a claim needs a decision.
Can approval notifications go to email or the User Copilot?
Yes. Approvers can act on claims from the app, an email, or the User Copilot, and each approver can set their own notification cadence: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.
What happens when a manager changes?
Nothing you need to rebuild. Update the line manager on the person's profile (or let it come through from your HR or payroll system) and every Line Manager stage follows automatically.
Can a category route to a different approver?
Yes. Give a category its own Approval Record and it overrides the claimant's normal workflow for that line only.
How does this work with our spend policy?
Approval routing works alongside policy enforcement, not instead of it. Claims that breach your spend policy can be flagged or blocked before they reach an approver at all. See our policy enforcement feature page for how those rules are configured.
Do approvers need training to use this?
No separate training is typically needed. Approvers work from the same app, email, or User Copilot notifications they already use, and the routing logic runs quietly in the background.
What if I don't want AI automatically approving or escalating claims?
That's fine: Smart Audit is optional, and you're in control of how much it does. You can turn off auto-approval altogether and have every claim go to a person, or run Smart Audit in insights-only mode first, where it shows you what it would have decided without actually approving or escalating anything.

Explore what else Capture Expense has to offer

Approval Workflows

See our approval workflows on your own claims

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