Summit Spend Help

Help Center / Approvals & expense reports

Set up approvals

Decide who approves what, add backups for people who are away, and choose what happens after approval.

Approvals live in Settings > Spend controls > Approvals. A new company starts with one workflow, Admin approval, which sends every charge to any Admin. Change it or add your own.

How workflows work

A workflow is a set of rules for one kind of spend, such as card charges, bills or reimbursements. Summit checks your workflows from top to bottom and uses the first one that matches a charge. Put your most specific workflows at the top.

Create a workflow

  1. Open the Workflows tab and click New workflow.
  2. Choose when it applies. You can use an amount range, GL accounts, departments, locations, projects and cards. Leave cards unticked to cover every card.
  3. Add an approval step and choose who approves:
    • Submitter's manager
    • Specific user
    • Anyone with role, like any Manager
  4. For a step with several approvers, choose whether any one, all or some of them must approve, and whether they're asked all at once or one at a time.
  5. Optionally, auto-approve charges at or below an amount, and pick a fallback for when a step finds nobody to ask.
  6. Save, then click Test routing to check a sample charge goes where you expect.

Workflows with more than one step are included on the Professional plan and up.

Approvers must have the Manager or Admin role. A Member named as an approver can't open the Approvals page. See Invite people and choose roles.

Cover for people who are away

On the Delegation tab, click Add cover. Choose who's away, who stands in, and the first and last day. Their approvals go to the stand-in for those days.

Approval settings

On the Settings tab:

  • Hold exports until someone approves: keeps spend that no workflow covers out of accounting until someone approves it.
  • Ask for a note on every approval: approvers must write a short reason each time.
  • Default deadline: how long a step can wait before it's overdue.
  • If coding changes after approval: do nothing, send it back for approval, or lock coding once a charge is approved.

Where approvers work

Approvers decide from the Approvals page on the web or the Approvals tab in the mobile app. Send them Review and approve.