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Approvals and Spending Policies

Decide who has to say yes before money leaves your organization, including making expenses over a certain amount need two approvers, whether an owner may approve their own request, and the expense rules volunteers and staff are reimbursed under.

Approvals decide who has to say yes before money goes out. Everything else on this page is the policy that shapes the request before it reaches an approver.

When you’d use this

  • Small reimbursements are waiting on a human for no good reason.
  • An owner approved their own expense and you want that to stop, or to be recorded.
  • A volunteer asked what the mileage rate is, or whether they need a receipt.
  • Your board asked for a second signature above a threshold.

Approvals

  1. Go to Settings → Organization → Approvals. You can read the rules as any user; only an owner or admin can change them. Non-admins see “You can see the rules but only an owner or admin can change them. Ask {owner}.”
  2. Pick a posture, or build your own:
    • Small team: one person approves. An owner or admin may approve their own request with a note.
    • Standard: anything under a threshold is approved automatically; above it, one approver, and nobody approves their own.
    • Strict: Standard, plus a second approver above a threshold, and the approver never records the payment.
  3. Each row in the list names its Scope and its Rule, and the What happens automatically column spells the effect out in a sentence, for example “A $40 volunteer expense you send is approved automatically. Nothing up to $75 waits for anyone.”
  4. Add a rule or Edit rule to override a single scope. A scope with no override reads “Inherits the workspace default”.
  5. Can an owner approve their own request? is answered No, Yes, with a note, or Yes. With a note, the note stays on the record.

Loosening a rule asks you to confirm: “This applies to every request in the workspace, from now on: some money that waits for a second person today will go out without one. Requests already waiting keep their current approver.” Turning on fully automatic approval for a band asks separately.

Two kinds of request are not set here, because they are set one at a time with the thing they apply to: donor-advised fund recommendations are set per fund with that fund’s other spending rules, and leave requests are set per leave type where you define the type.

Saving reads: “Saved. Requests sent from now on follow the new rule; requests already waiting keep their current approver.”

Expense settings

  1. Go to Settings → Organization → Expenses.
  2. Request deadline sets how many days after the expense date a claim may be submitted. Volunteers see a countdown badge starting 14 days before the deadline. IRS guidance is to reimburse within 60 days.
  3. Mileage sets the reimbursement rate per mile. The screen notes that the IRS standard mileage rate for charitable use is $0.14 per mile in 2026, and that many nonprofits adopt the business rate instead to be generous to volunteers.
  4. Receipts sets the amount below which no receipt is needed. The IRS-recommended threshold is $25.
  5. Spending caps behave differently from each other, deliberately. Max per expense blocks a claim above the limit. Max per day and Max per event do not block: the claim is accepted, flagged, and always routed to a person instead of being approved automatically. Leave a cap blank for no cap.
  6. Kinds of claim you pay back is a list of categories, each of which can be turned off and can carry its own cap. A volunteer who submits a kind you have turned off is told so immediately, by name, and the claim is never created.
  7. Things you never pay back is a free list, seeded with alcohol, tobacco and gift cards.

Approval thresholds are not on this screen. It says so: “Auto-approve and second-signer rules now live in Settings › Approvals so every flow uses the same ones.”

Employment details

Settings → My Account → Employment Details is your own employment record, not a policy screen. It shows the employment facts HR holds about you. Where those facts may be edited depends on the authority set in People Data.

Purchase orders

Purchase-order approvals are set on Settings → Organization → Approvals, in the Purchase orders row. There is no separate procurement settings screen; an old link to one opens Approvals.

What it affects

  • Approval rules apply to every request sent from the moment you save, across expenses, bills, payouts and purchase orders. Requests already waiting keep the approver they were given.
  • The request deadline drives the countdown a volunteer sees, and claims submitted after it are refused.
  • The mileage rate is applied to every new mileage claim; claims already submitted keep the rate they were calculated at.
  • Turning a category off prevents the claim from being created at all, so it never appears in your expense reports.

When it goes wrong

What you see What to do
“Only an owner or admin can change approval rules. Ask {owner}.” You have read access. Ask the named owner to make the change.
“Could not load approval settings.” Reload. “Nothing was changed. The rules below are still the ones in force.”
“Nobody has to approve money yet” No posture is set. Answer “Who should approve requests?” or money goes out with no review.
“A person always approves. We could not read this row, so open the rule to confirm.” Open that rule. Muin is telling you it could not read the row rather than guessing.
“Must be between 1 and 365 days” / “Must be a non-negative number under $5/mile” Correct the highlighted field. The caps are deliberate sanity limits.
“Keep at least one kind of claim. Turning them all off means no volunteer could ever be paid back.” Leave at least one reimbursable category on.

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