Today we are releasing multi-step approvals for every customer on the Scale plan. Bills, reimbursements and card limit requests can now pass through up to five approvers in a set order, with rules based on the amount, the department and the entity the spend belongs to. Team plan customers keep single-step approvals, which now support conditions as well.

Why we built it

As companies grow, the person who requests spend is rarely the person who should approve it alone. A department head understands whether a purchase is needed. The finance lead knows whether the budget can absorb it. For larger amounts, a founder or the CFO may want the final word. Until now, many of our customers handled the second and third approvals in email threads or spreadsheets, outside the system where the payment actually happens.

We spoke with more than 80 finance teams before designing this feature. The most common request was simple: approvals should follow the same rules the company already uses, and every decision should be recorded next to the payment it applies to.

How approval chains work

An approval chain is a list of approvers and the conditions that decide when each one is needed. You create chains in Settings under Approvals, and each chain applies to bills, reimbursements, limit requests or all three.

• Amount rules, such as requiring the CFO for anything above $10,000

• Department rules, so marketing spend goes to the marketing lead first

• Entity rules for companies that run more than one legal entity

• Vendor rules, such as an extra review for any new supplier

When a bill arrives, Ledgerly checks the rules from top to bottom and builds the chain automatically. Each approver is notified in turn by email, in the mobile app or in Slack and Microsoft Teams. They can approve, reject with a reason or ask the requester a question without leaving the notification.

Built for real teams

Approvers go on vacation, change roles and leave companies. Approval chains handle all three. Each approver can name a delegate for a date range, and requests that wait longer than a set time can escalate to a backup approver. If someone leaves, Ledgerly reassigns their pending approvals to their manager and shows the change in the audit history.

Admins can also see every pending approval in one list, sorted by how long it has been waiting. Finance teams told us the biggest delay in paying suppliers on time was not the approval itself but not knowing where a bill was stuck.

A complete record of every decision

Every approval, rejection and comment is stored on the transaction with a timestamp and the approver’s name. When your auditor asks who approved a payment, the answer is one click away. The record also syncs to Xero and QuickBooks as a note on the bill, so the approval trail lives alongside the accounting entry.

Getting started

Scale customers can turn on multi-step approvals today. Start with one rule, such as a second approver for bills above a certain amount, and add more once your team is comfortable. Existing single-step approvals keep working until you change them.

• Open Settings, then Approvals

• Choose Create chain and pick what it applies to

• Add approvers in order and set the conditions for each

• Turn on Slack or Teams notifications for faster responses

If you are on the Team plan and want to try multi-step approvals, contact your account team for a 30-day trial of Scale. We would love to hear how approvals work at your company and what you would like to see next.