Approval chains

This article refers to a feature that might not be available in your current Brex plan. If you'd like to learn more about this feature and how to unlock additional capabilities in Brex's upgraded plans, please have your account or card admin reach out to Brex Support by clicking on Support in your dashboard.

Overview

You can set different approval rules through your expense policy for many of the actions your team will take using Brex. From card expenses to reimbursement requests to bill payments, there are plenty of needs for approval. However, sometimes you need more than a single individual signing off. This is an approval chain — a string of individuals that need to approve something in your Brex account before it can be accepted. This is useful if you need multiple sets of eyes on something, or if you want to be sure a manager approves before sending the request on to an admin. This article explains how to set up approvers and view requests. Note: To set up approvals for your Brex business account, please refer to this article.

Approval chain rules

For Essentials Essentials

Step 1: In your dashboard, click Cards and limits > Manage company policies. Step 2: Click Edit next to the specific feature you want to update, such as card expenses, reimbursements, bills, and travel. Step 3: Edit the approval chain by customizing the following fields:

For cards expenses and reimbursements:
- For out-of-policy expenses, require approval from
  - Add approval step (optional)
- For expenses: X$ and above
  - Require review from
  - Add approval step (optional)
For bills:
- For expenses: X$ and above
  - Require review from
    - Add approval step(optional)
- Add rule for expenses above a certain amount (optional)
For travel:
- Read more on customizing travel policies here.

For Premium, Enterprise, and P-Card Premium Enterprise Smart Card

Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Cards and Limits. Step 2: Click Manage policies. Step 3: Click your desired Expense policy > Edit. This will bring you to Expense policy edits , where you can make additional adjustments as needed. When complete, click Continue until you get to Approval chains. Step 4: Click Edit next to the specific feature you want to update, such as card expenses, reimbursements, bills, and travel. Step 5: Customize any of the following fields:

For cards expenses and reimbursements:
- For out-of-policy expenses, require approval from
  - Add approval step (optional)
- For expenses: X$ and above
  - Require review from
- Add approval step (optional)
For bills:
- For expenses: $X and above
  - Require review from
    - (Optional) Add approval step
- (Optional) Add approval steps

Step 6 (optional): You can add a rule to dynamically route certain user’s expense approvals based on the specific employee spending or their role, department/cost center, entity, or location. You can drag and drop exceptions to prioritize what happens if an employee falls into multiple rules. Note: If enabled by Brex, guardrails on self-approvals help keep your team’s compliance on track by blocking requesters from approving their own expense request in review (i.e card expenses, reimbursements, bill payments, spend limit requests, and spend limit increases) provided there are three or more admins on your Brex account. Any other admin can approve your expenses — you don’t need to designate a singular approver.

View approver

Of a card expense

Some transactions, depending on the policy, will need to be approved. Your account or card admin can act as the final approver, but they can also create a chain of approvals by designating a mid-level approver. If you need to reach out to them to discuss the transaction, you can follow the steps below to determine who the approver is. Step 1: In your dashboard, as an account or card admin, you can find the approver of any team member’s card expense in Expenses. You can find the approver for a personal expense in Wallet. Step 2: Click on the specific expense and check the name under Approvals. Note: If there’s a checkmark next to the expense, that person has already approved it. If there’s no checkmark, the transaction is still pending approval.

Assign managers

Managers can see their direct reports’ card transactions and spend alerts. Only account admins and card admins can make changes to the company expense policy, but managers can follow up on out-of-policy transactions and mark them as reviewed. Account admins and card admins can now indicate a user's manager in their user details. This gives managers more visibility into and control over their direct reports’ spend, and helps account admins and card admins delegate important expense management tasks. Account admins and card admins can assign managers by following the steps below. Step 1: Navigate to the Team tab in your Brex dashboard and click Users. Step 2: Click the user's name and in the details section on the right, enter the user’s manager in the Manager field. If the user's manager does not appear in the dropdown, start typing their name into the field to make their name selectable. Note: Only active users who aren’t bookkeepers can become a manager. Non-admins can also become managers of any user.

Outstanding approval requests

If you have any outstanding requests assigned to you that need approval, you can find them in your dashboard’s Tasks page. Here, click Requests to view a list of any items waiting for your action. Account and card admins can view requests across your organization from either the Expenses, Reimbursements or Spend limit/ Budgets, depending on the request type.

Review expenses

Account and card admins can review expenses that fall outside their company’s policy from the Brex dashboard. We’ll send weekly reminders to account or card admins to review expenses for their direct reports.

Single expenses

In the dashboard

Account and card admins can click on a specific expense under Tasks > Requests to review it. Alternatively, you can follow the steps below: Step 1: Click See all to go to the Expenses page. This gives you more details on the expense pending review. Step 2: Use the search bar to search for a specific transaction by user, merchant, merchant category, or department. You can review multiple expenses by grouping them based on specific parameters, and then approve or deny them in bulk. Note: If you aren’t the designated approver, click the three dots icon and select Skip other reviewers and approve. Step 3: After approving or denying an expense, a banner will appear at the top of your screen for several seconds, giving you the option to undo the action. Interested in revamping your expense policy? Read our comprehensive Corporate Card Expense Policy Guide for suggestions and considerations for stress-free expense management.

In the app

Step 1: Open your app and locate the expense that needs approval. Step 2: Depending on the circumstance, tap either Mark as reviewed or Request repayment and approve.

Multiple expenses

You can approve or deny more than one expense at a time by checking the box to the left of every transaction in question. Once you’re finished selecting, click either Deny selected or Approve selected at the bottom of the screen. Depending on your permission level, you can skip over previous reviewers and approve the selected expenses yourself. A popup window will appear, summarizing the intended changes, where you can click Confirm if everything looks correct.

Review bill payment drafts

Any user with Approve payments toggled on can review bill payment requests via the Brex dashboard. Admins can then quickly review bill payment requests via email or the Brex dashboard.

In your dashboard

Any user with Approve payments toggled on can review multiple bill payments in your Brex dashboard. Step 1: In your dashboard, go to either Bills or Tasks. Step 2: Click on a bill (those labeled with Requires approval will be displayed at the top). Step 3: Select Approve or Deny. Step 4: If you choose to deny a payment, you’ll need to provide a reason for your denial of the bill payment and select whether you’d like to notify the submitter.

Via email

Admins can approve or deny bill payments directly from your email without signing in to your Brex account. Step 1: In the email, click View payment. Step 2: Click Approve or Deny. Step 3: If you choose to deny a payment, you’ll need to provide a reason for your denial of the bill payment and select whether you’d like to notify the submitter.

Flagged expenses

Guided reviews leverage Brex AI and allow account and card admins to easily find expenses that should have a closer inspection before approving. These expenses will be flagged in both your dashboard's Expenses page and Tasks > Expenses. A flagged expense doesn’t automatically mean the expense should be denied, or that the employee was acting maliciously. It simply indicates that a closer review is recommended. Expenses are flagged with the following icon in the expenses table. When you click on the transaction, you’ll see a banner explaining why the expense was flagged.

You can filter to view flagged expenses by clicking Add filter > Flagged expenses.

Expenses are flagged based on a combination of defined risk rules and a machine learning model that scans for anomalous spend — such as a reimbursement submitted for a higher amount than what’s listed on the receipt. Some flagging rules rely on OCR (optical character recognition), which isn’t 100% accurate. These rules will continue to become more advanced over time.

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