What Automatic Approval does
When an expense report is submitted, Expense Management checks it against automatic approval criteria, that is:
The expense report should not contain any expense that triggers an active policy.
The expense report should not require more than one-level of approval (approver 2 or project approvers).
The expense report total amount should be lower than the threshold amount set by the admin.
If all conditions stated above are true for an expense report, the following happens:
The expense report is approved automatically.
An approval email is sent to the spender stating that their report was approved automatically.
A message is added to the expense report stating it was approved automatically.
An approval event is added to the expense & report history
The assigned approver is disabled, i.e., they won’t see this report under Your team's reports > Approval needed as it’s already approved.
Before you start (recommended)
Automatic Approvals works best when your core policy rules & approval settings 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, out-of-policy categories).
Do you already have expense policies created to capture exceptional expenses?
Based on your assessment, create policies & additional approval settings to capture exceptional expenses. Reports containing these exceptional expenses will never be automatically approved, will follow their chosen approval path, and will require approvers to manually review and approve them.
Setting up Automatic Approvals
Go to Settings > Expenses & reports > Set auto-approvals
You can also set auto approvals during your onboarding journey.Toggle ON auto approve expense reports.
Set threshold report amount (should be more than 0)
Select Save.
Note:
The expense reports which were in submitted state before enabling the feature will not be automatically approved. All new reports submitted after enabling this feature will be automatically approved if they meet the eligibility criteria.
Troubleshooting
Use this section to understand why an expense 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: 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
You've either added Approver 2 from Employee approvals page or haev project approvals that have resulted in multiple approvers being assigned to the report, 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 the expense report to approve manually.
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 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 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.
If you need further assistance with auto-approvals, contact our support team at support@capitalone.sage.com.