How to set up approval workflows

Out of the box, Mylo runs a simple approval queue: submitted expenses pile up in one place and any owner, admin, or connected accountant clears them with one tap (how that works). That remains the default.

Approval workflows are the opt-in layer on top: ordered steps, multiple required signatures, amount thresholds, and different rules for different people. This guide walks through setting them up and what changes for approvers once they're on.

> Who can configure this: approval settings are managed by an org > owner or a connected accountant. You'll find everything under > Settings → Organisation → Approvals.

1. Turn on Approvals

The Approvals card has a single master toggle: "Require one or more people to approve expenses before they're reimbursed."

• Off (default): the simple one-click queue. Nothing about your current process changes.
• On: the card expands to show your approval workflows and approver groups, and submitted expenses start following the matching workflow.

One change to know about: with workflows in play, corporate-card expenses route through the same approval queue as out-of-pocket ones when submitted; they no longer auto-approve on submit. (The separate org setting that auto-submits corporate-card expenses exactly matching a bank transaction still works as before.)

If an expense is submitted and no enabled workflow matches the submitter, it falls back to the simple queue, so turning the toggle on never strands an expense.

2. The default workflow

Your workflow list includes one marked Default. It applies to everyone (its scope is pinned), and it's your safety net: it can be edited and even switched off, but never deleted. Any submitter no other workflow claims is covered by it.

For many teams, editing the default workflow is the whole setup: set who approves, save, done.

3. Create a workflow

Tap Add approval workflow to open the editor. Three things define a workflow:

Who it applies to

• Everyone: the org-wide rule.
• Specific people: pick members by name (chips; tap to toggle).
• Group: pick one of your approver groups.

When several workflows could apply to a submitter, the most specific wins: specific people → group → everyone.

The approval steps

Each workflow is an ordered list of steps. A step reads like a sentence: "Requires [N] approvals from [approvers]", and you build it with:

• The quorum stepper: the number of required approvals, from 1 up to 20. With N > 1, the step needs N signatures from distinct people; nobody can sign the same step twice. (If the submitter is in the eligible pool, their signature counts too.)
• Approvers: add any mix of:

- People: specific members by name. - Roles: Owner, Admin, or Accountant (your connected accounting firm). Roles resolve to the actual people holding them. - Groups: reusable named sets of people (see below).

• An amount condition: toggle "Only when amount is over $___" and enter a threshold. The step then only applies to expenses over that amount and is skipped below it. (If every step is skipped for a small expense, it's approved at submit; there's nothing left to sign.)

Use Add another step to build a chain (up to 10 steps). Steps run in order: step 2's approvers only see the expense after step 1 is satisfied.

> Pick approvers who can approve. Actually signing an expense requires > approval rights: org owners, admins, and your connected > accountant have them. Regular members don't, so don't build a step that > only a regular member could satisfy.

Approver groups

From the Approvals card, create named approver groups (e.g. "Accounting", "Leadership") and pick their members. A group is reusable in two ways: as a step's approver pool, and as the set of people a workflow applies to. Edit the group once; every workflow that references it follows.

4. Read the plain-English summary

As you edit, the editor keeps a live summary of the whole workflow in plain English, for example:

> For everyone's out-of-pocket expenses: first Maya approves. Then, on > anything over $5,000, any 2 different people who are an Owner or in > Accounting must approve.

If the sentence says what you meant, hit Save workflow. If it doesn't, you've just caught a misconfiguration before it caught you.

Saved rules don't disturb in-flight expenses. When an expense is submitted, its workflow is snapshotted onto it. Editing or deleting a workflow afterwards only affects future submissions; expenses already in the chain finish under the rules they entered with.

5. What approvers see

The approval queue picks up two step-aware chips on each expense:

• Your turn: the current step is waiting on you (you're eligible and haven't signed yet).
• Waiting on others: the expense is mid-chain but the current step doesn't need you right now (not your step, or you've already signed).

Use the Waiting on me filter (with a live count) to collapse the queue to just the expenses that actually need your signature. Approving works exactly as before (the Approve button), but on a workflow expense it records your signature against the current step rather than instantly approving. Once a step has all its required signatures, the expense advances; when the last step is satisfied, it's approved.

6. The signature trail

Every workflow expense carries an Approval progress timeline: one row per step, showing its state (done, active, pending, or skipped with its threshold), how many approvals it's still waiting on, and each signature: who approved, denied, or force-approved, and when. Denials and overrides are called out in the trail, so the full history of a decision is always attached to the expense itself.

7. Denials and resubmitting

Any eligible approver can Deny at their step, with a required reason. That halts the chain immediately: the expense goes back to the submitter as denied, with the reason attached.

When the submitter fixes and resubmits, the chain restarts from step 1 with a fresh snapshot and a clean signature ledger; an edited expense is a new approval (an edit might change the amount and flip a threshold step). Prior denial reasons stay in the expense's history so approvers have the context on the resubmission.

8. Force-approving a stuck step

If a step can no longer reach its quorum (say an approver left the org and the remaining eligible people can't cover the required count), Mylo flags the step as stuck directly in the approval timeline.

An org owner or admin (including an accountant validly acting as one) can then use Force approve to move the expense past the stuck step. A reason is required, and the override is recorded in the signature trail under the name of the person who actually pressed the button. A regular accountant session without act-as can't force-approve; overriding a chain is an org-authority action.

Good to know

• The legacy flow is still the default. Approvals off = the one-click queue described in Submitting, approving, and denying expenses.
• Signatures are distinct. A quorum of 2 means two different people; the same person can't sign a step twice.
• Amount conditions are "strictly over". A $5,000 threshold step applies to $5,000.01, not to $5,000.00.
• Snapshots make edits safe. Change workflows any time; in-flight expenses keep the rules they were submitted under.
• Deleting a group removes it as an approver from workflows that used it; check those workflows afterwards.
• The default workflow can't be deleted; switch it off instead if you truly want no org-wide rule.

Once expenses clear their chain, they're approved and ready for your books; see Export to QuickBooks.