Approval workflows: from one approver to "any 2 of Owners or Accounting over $5,000"

Most expense tools give you two options: a single approve button, or an enterprise "workflow engine" that needs a consultant to configure. Mylo now gives you the whole range in one place, and you only climb as far up the power curve as your company actually needs.

Every level below is a real configuration you can build today in Settings → Organisation → Approvals. Each one is one small addition to the last.

Level 0: the one-click queue (still the default)

If you never touch the new setting, nothing changes. With Approvals off, submitted expenses land in one queue, and any owner, admin, or your connected accountant clears them with a single tap, in bulk if they like. For a five-person company, that's often all the process you want.

Everything below is opt-in, behind one toggle.

Level 1: one approver for everyone

Flip the Approvals toggle on and you can define workflows. The simplest one is a single step:

> 1 approval from Owner.

That's it. Every out-of-pocket expense now needs one explicit sign-off from an owner before it's approved. Same queue, same buttons, but now the approval is a recorded signature from someone the workflow named, not just whoever got there first.

Level 2: a chain (first your manager, then Accounting)

Add a second step and you have a real chain:

1. 1 approval from Maya (a specific person)
2. 1 approval from the Accounting group

The expense moves through the steps in order. Maya sees it first; Accounting only sees it once Maya has signed. Each step shows who it's waiting on, and the expense's Approval progress timeline shows every signature as it lands.

Groups are the trick here: create a reusable approver group (say, "Accounting") once, and use it in as many workflows as you like: as a set of approvers, or as the set of people a workflow applies to.

Level 3: quorums, any 2 distinct signers

Sometimes one signature isn't enough. Turn the stepper on a step up from 1:

> 2 approvals from Owner or Accounting.

Now any two different people from that pool must sign. Mylo enforces distinctness (the same person can't sign a step twice) and the queue shows "waiting on 1 more approval" until the quorum is met. If the submitter happens to be in the pool, their own signature counts too; the point is two distinct humans, not two ceremonies.

Level 4: amount conditions, only over $5,000

Big spend deserves more eyes; coffee doesn't. Any step can carry a condition:

> Only when amount is over $5,000.

Below the threshold, the step is simply skipped and the chain moves on. Combine that with a quorum and you get the headline rule:

1. 1 approval from Maya, always
2. 2 approvals from Owner or Accounting, only over $5,000

A $40 lunch gets one quick sign-off. A $12,000 conference sponsorship gets Maya plus two of your most senior people. As you build this, the editor restates it back to you in plain English (e.g. "first Maya approves. Then, on anything over $5,000, any 2 different people who are an Owner or in Accounting must approve"), so what you configured is exactly what you meant.

Level 5: different workflows for different teams

Finally, workflows can apply to everyone, to specific people, or to a group. The sales team can route through the sales lead; contractors can route straight to the owner; everyone else uses the default. When more than one workflow could apply, the most specific wins: a person-specific workflow beats a group workflow beats the everyone workflow.

The default workflow always covers anyone no other workflow claims, so nobody ever falls through the cracks.

The guarantees underneath

However tall your chain gets, the same rules hold:

• Submitting locks the rules in. The workflow is snapshotted onto the expense at submit time. Edit or delete the workflow later; expenses already in flight finish under the rules they entered with.
• Every decision is on the record. Approvals, denials, and overrides are signatures in a per-expense trail, with names and dates.
• A denial stops the chain. The expense goes back to the submitter with a required reason. When they fix and resubmit, the chain restarts from step 1 with fresh signatures; an edited expense is a new approval.
• Nothing gets stuck forever. If a step can no longer reach its quorum (say an approver left the company), Mylo flags it and an owner or admin can force-approve past it, with a required reason, recorded in the trail like any other signature.
• Corporate cards go through review too. Corporate-card expenses now route through the same approval queue as everything else when submitted, so the chain doubles as your review step for company-paid spend. (The optional auto-submit setting for corporate-card charges that exactly match a bank transaction still exists if you want that spend to skip the queue.)

Start simple: that's the point

You don't have to design your dream approval matrix on day one. Turn the toggle on, name one approver, and ship it. Add a step when the team grows, a quorum when the amounts do, and a per-team workflow when one size stops fitting all. The power is there the day you need it, and invisible until then.

Ready to set it up? The step-by-step guide is here: How to set up approval workflows. For how the basic queue works, see Submitting, approving, and denying expenses.