Automatic Approvals lets your expenses be automatically when they meet certain criteria - so routine, low-risk spend does not wait in approver’s inbox. This reduces approval backlog, speeds up reimbursements, and keeps approvers focused on exceptions.
What Automatic Approvals does
When an expense report is submitted, Sage Expense Management checks it against automatic approval criteria, that is:
Report should not contain any expense that triggers an active policy.
Report should not require more than one-level of approval.
Report should not contain any potentially duplicate expenses.
Report total amount should be lower than the threshold amount set by the admin.
If all 4 conditions stated above are true for a report, the following happens:
Report is approved automatically.
Approval email is sent to the spender stating that their report was approved automatically.
A message is added in the report stating it was approved automatically.
An approval event is added to expense & report history
The assigned approver is disabled i.e.
They won’t see this report under Team reports > Pending on me as it’s already approved.
They will see this report under Team report > All section.
Before you start (recommended)
Automatic Approvals works best when your core policy rules & approval rules are already clear. Before enabling it, decide:
Which reports are truly low risk to approve automatically?
What’s the safe report total amount?
What should never be auto-approved? (Examples: high amounts, cash transactions, out-of-policy categories.)
Do you already have expense policies created to capture exceptional expenses?
Based on your assessment, create policies & approval rules to capture exceptional expenses. Reports containing these exceptional expenses will never be automatically approved and will follow their chosen approval path and will require approvers to manually review and approve them.
Setting up Automatic Approvals
Go to Admin Settings > Workflows > Approvals
Toggle ON auto approve expense reports.
Set threshold report amount (should be more than 0)
Click Enable
Note: After you hit enable, all reports in submitted state will be checked against automatically approval criteria. Reports which meet the criteria will be automatically approved and emails will sent to employees.
Troubleshooting
Use this section to understand why a report didn’t get automatically approved, and what to do next.
A policy was triggered by an expense in the report
What it means
At least one expense in the report matched an active policy rule (for example: missing receipt, amount limit breach, required fields missing, etc.).
What you’ll notice
The report goes through the normal approval flow instead of auto-approving.
You may see a policy-related warning/flag on the expense (depending on your setup).
What to do
Open the report and review any policy warnings on the expenses.
Fix the issue and resubmit if your process requires it.
The report requires more than one level of approval
What it means
Your approval rules resulted in multiple approvers being assigned to the report (multi-stage approval), so it isn’t eligible for automatic approval.
What you’ll notice
The report appears in the approval chain and waits for manual review.
Approvers will see it in sequence.
What to do
Check which expenses caused additional approvers to be added.
Wait for the report to be approved by all assigned approvers.
The report contains potentially duplicate expenses
What it means
Sage Expense Management detected that one or more expenses in the report may be duplicates. To prevent accidental double reimbursement, automatic approval is disabled.
What you’ll notice
The report won’t auto-approve even if it meets other criteria.
What to do
Review the expenses for duplicates (same amount/date/merchant/category, repeated upload, etc.).
Remove or correct the duplicate expense and resubmit if needed.
If it’s a false positive, proceed through manual approval (approvers can review and decide).
The report total is above the threshold amount
What it means
The report total exceeds the maximum allowed amount for automatic approvals set by the administrator.
What you’ll notice
The report follows the standard approval process.
What to do
If you have expenses that can be submitted separately, split the spend into separate reports (only if that’s allowed by your internal policy).
If the threshold feels too low for routine spend, ask an admin to review and adjust it.
The report was auto-approved but I can’t find it in “Pending on me” (Approver)
Why this happens
This is expected behavior. When a report is auto-approved, the assigned approver is effectively bypassed.
Where to find it
Go to Team reports → All to view the report.
Open the report to see:
the message stating it was approved automatically, and
the approval event in report/expense history.
The employee didn’t receive an auto-approval email
What it could mean
The report wasn’t actually auto-approved (it failed one of the criteria).
Email delivery is delayed or blocked by your organization’s email settings.
What to do
Confirm the report status is Approved and check for the “approved automatically” message in the report.
If the report is auto-approved but no email was received, have your IT/admin team check spam/quarantine settings and allowed senders.