If you are dealing with a large number of Purchases regularly, you can simplify the approval process by setting up Expenditure Approval Workflows.

With this, different team members can process, review, and approve expenditures at various stages with ease. 

Let’s see how:

Creating A Workflow

To create a new workflow, go to Sidebar > Workflows > Expenditure Workflows > Click “Create New Workflow”:

You will see the following pop-up:

You will see four fields here:

• Name of Workflow: Add a workflow name. 
• Describe your Workflow: Add more details about the workflow for additional reference.
• Super Approver: Select the "Super Approver" (i.e. the team member who has access to manage approvals at all stages of the workflow).
• Stages: Add/edit /delete Workflow stages as per your approval process. For example, we have added three stages here. Each stage (New, In Progress, In Review) represents the approval stage of an Expenditure.

For each stage, go to the "Edit" option, and select "Approvers" for that particular stage:

As you see, you can add one or more approvers for a specific stage. These approvers will not have access for approval for any other stages of the workflow.

Note that it is mandatory to add at least one approver for each stages to create a workflow.

Once done, click “Create Workflow”, and the workflow will be added to your system:

Once your workflow is set, you will have to add your Purchases to the relevant workflows. But before that, let’s understand how you can record Purchases.

Recording Purchases

There are two ways you can record Purchases & Expenses -

1. Record a Purchase/Expense (Manually & in Bulk)  Learn how>
2. Create an RFI (Request For Invoice) link and convert these invoices into Purchases in 1 click. Learn how>

Adding Expenses to Workflows

To add an expenditure to any workflow, go to that particular Expenditure from your Expense dashboard, and click “Add to Workflow”:

You will see the following pop-up:

Here, you will see three fields:

• Select Workflow: Select the Workflow where you want to manage this Purchase.
• Select Stage: Select the approval stage of this Purchase (New, In Progress, In Review, etc.)
• Select Assignee: Assign to a particular team member

Once done, click “Save Changes”.  This Purchase has been successfully added to the Expenditure Approval Workflow.

Managing Expenditure Approvals

To view Purchases in your Expenditure Approval Workflow, go to Workflows > Expenditure Workflows > More > View Expenditure:

You will have the following options on the Approval page:

1. Select Assignee: Change the assignee 
2. Set Stage: Set the approval stage
3. View Purchase: View the complete Purchase document from this page
4. Previous Purchases: View all the previous Purchases from the same vendor
5. Discard/Complete: The assignee can either discard a purchase or mark the approval process as complete by clicking on the "Discard" or "Complete" buttons.

Approval status of each Purchase can also be tracked from the respective workflows:

That's it! 

If you still have questions, please drop an email at care@refrens.com OR reach out to us on live chat support for quick assistance.

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How to Create & Send RFI (Request for Invoice) Links?

Updated on: 09/07/2025