Use case · Purchase approvals
Every purchase, routed by what it costs.
Spend requests are where informal approval hurts most: the numbers matter, the approver changes with the amount, and someone will ask about it in nine months. Requester collects the figures upfront and routes on them automatically.
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FIN-284
Sarah K. · Engineering
Purchase request — MacBook Pro
- Item or service
- 14" MacBook Pro, M-series
- Amount
- $2,480.00
- Vendor
- Apple Business
- Cost centre
- Engineering — ENG-04
- Business justificationover $2,000
- Replacing a 2019 unit failing CI builds
Justification only appears above the threshold — nobody writes an essay to buy a keyboard.
“Can I buy this?” is not a purchase request
It's missing the amount, the vendor, the cost centre, and the urgency — which is why the answer is always another question.
A message in a channel
- No amount, so nobody knows whether it needs one approver or three.
- The manager approves it verbally; finance finds out when the invoice lands.
- Two people buy the same thing from different vendors in the same month.
- At year end, nobody can reconstruct who authorised what.
A routed purchase request
- The amount is a currency field, so the workflow can branch on it.
- Finance is a step in the process, not a surprise at invoicing time.
- Cost centre is captured at source, so reporting works without a reconciliation exercise.
- The audit log answers “who approved this” with a name and a timestamp.
One rule, written once, applied every time
This is the whole policy most companies actually have — it just usually lives in someone's head rather than on a canvas.
Purchase approval — execution
trigger
Request submitted
Sarah K. submits against the purchase template.
condition
amount > $500
Below this, the request auto-approves and notifies the submitter.
approval:select-users
Line manager
Any one approver. Decided from the email in under a minute.
condition
amount > $2,000
Adds a second step only when the number justifies it.
approval:team
Finance
Routed to the team, so whoever is on rota picks it up.
action:set-status
Status: PO Issued
A custom workspace status mapped to the Approved category.
In a group chat
9 days
Asked on Monday, chased Thursday, re-asked the following week after the thread scrolled away.
On Requester
2 days
Submitted complete, decided from an email, escalated automatically when it passed the SLA.
Illustrative, not a benchmark — the point is where the time goes. Almost none of it is the decision itself; nearly all of it is the gap between asking and the request reaching someone able to answer.
Describe it, don’t draw it
“Purchases over $500 go to my manager, over $2,000 also need finance, and remind them after two days.” That sentence generates the branches, the approval steps, and the SLA reminder — then you edit whatever it got wrong.
The parts finance actually asks for
A defensible record
Actor, timestamp, IP, and user agent on every decision — including approvals made by external parties, recorded as external:<email>.
Spend patterns, not anecdotes
Volume by cost centre, cycle time, and the slowest step in your own approval chain. Usually a surprise.
Escalation without nagging
Step SLAs remind the approver; workspace escalation raises it to admins if the reminder doesn't work.
No seat tax on asking
Everyone in the company can submit purchase requests for free. You pay for approvers and volume only.
What this process leans on
Currency & attachment fields
Real typed amounts the workflow can branch on, and quotes attached at submission rather than requested later.
Learn moreConditional branching
Threshold rules on any field value — the difference between a form and a process.
Learn moreDecide from email
Single-use approve and reject links carrying the AI summary. No login, no app, no excuse.
Learn moreAudit log & analytics
Every decision recorded, plus reporting on where the process is actually slow.
Learn moreOn purchase approvals
- Can approval thresholds be based on the amount?
- Yes — that's the most common workflow anyone builds. A conditional branch reads the currency field and routes accordingly: under $500 auto-approves, $500 to $2,000 needs the line manager, above that finance joins as a second step.
- What stops someone splitting a purchase to dodge the threshold?
- Visibility rather than a hard block. Request linking lets you relate purchases to each other, analytics show volume and pattern by submitter and cost centre, and the audit log keeps every submission — including the ones that were withdrawn.
- Can our CFO approve without being in the tool every day?
- Yes. Reviewer emails carry single-use approve and reject buttons with the AI summary attached, so a decision takes one click from an inbox. If they're genuinely external — a fractional CFO, a parent company — external approvers work by email with no account and no seat.
- Does this replace our accounting system?
- No, and it shouldn't. Requester owns the decision — who asked, who approved, on what basis, and when. Use the event webhook or a webhook workflow step to push the approved purchase into your accounting or ERP system once the decision is made.
- How do we handle a purchase that needs quotes attached?
- Attachment fields on the form, with presigned access and previews. You can require them conditionally — three quotes above a threshold, none below — so the rule lives in the form rather than in someone's memory.
Other processes teams start with
IT access requests
Tool and permission requests with an auditable grant history.
Time off & HR requests
Leave, equipment, and people requests that stop living in DMs.
Vendor onboarding
Collect vendor detail, route legal and finance sign-off, keep the file.
Expense approvals
Receipts, amounts, and cost centers captured before anyone decides.
Client & external intake
A public link that turns outside requests into tracked work.
Put a number on your approval threshold. Let the workflow enforce it.
Start from the purchase request template, set your thresholds, and send a real one through today. Multi-step approvals are included on the free plan.