Using Expense Rules, you can automate the approval of certain expenses. This helps your team save time, reimburse faster, and reduce manual reviews for low-risk expenses.
And if you're using Smart Audit, you can confidently approve even more without compromising on control.
In this article:
How to create an automatic approval/control rule
1. Open admin settings
2. Go to Admin settings > Expense rules.
3. Click + Add expense rule
4. Choose who the rule applies to
-
Everyone in your account
-
A specific branch
-
A user group
-
Individual users
5. Set the conditions:
-
Category (like taxi, meals, hotel)
-
Payment method (such as company or personal card)
-
Receipt attached or not
-
Amount per expense, per attendee, or per night
-
Date of submission or expense date
-
Custom fields
- Weekend/workweek
- Transaction match
- Location and currency match
💡 You can combine conditions for more specific rules.
6. Select Auto approve as action and specify whether expenses should be auto approved, controlled or both.
7. Name the rule. Give it a clear name so you can easily recognise it later. You can also add an optional description.
8. Set the status to active and click Add expense rule to save it.
How Smart Audit works alongside auto approval
Setting up automatic approval rules can save your team a lot of time, but how do you make sure you're not approving something that shouldn't slip through? That’s where Smart Audit comes in.
What is Smart Audit?
Smart Audit automatically checks every expense against more than 25 potential audit checks, such as:
- AI generated receipts
- Travel upgrades
- Duplicate expenses
- ...
Choose what blocks auto approval
You have full control over how Smart Audit interacts with your approval flow. For each check, you decide whether it should block auto approval, auto control, both or not.
You can configure it so that for example only out-of-policy checks block approval.
Example: You could automatically approve all meals under 50 euros, but block any that fail the AI generated receipt or duplicate expense check.
Why combine Smart Audit with auto approval?
Smart Audit allows you to confidently approve more expenses automatically while keeping full control. Anything suspicious or potentially non compliant will be flagged and send for manual review.
This way you increase speed without losing oversight.
✨ Not using Smart Audit yet? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or success@rydoo.com to learn more.
Best practices: Examples of expenses that are often auto approved
Many companies successfully auto approve a wide range of everyday expenses. The goal is to automate what's low risk and recurring, while keeping manual control over anything that needs extra attention.
Here are common categories companies choose to auto approve:
1. Low value and routine expenses
These are simple, recurring costs that rarely cause issues.
-
Snacks, coffee, drinks under 15 EUR
-
Parking and tolls under 20 EUR
-
Office supplies under 50 EUR
-
Internet or phone bills under 50 EUR
-
Postage or shipping fees
2. Travel and transport
Often capped per ride or expense, and easy to track.
-
Taxi and public transport under 40–50 EUR
-
Fuel under 50 EUR
-
Train or bus tickets
3. Meals and hotels
Set per-person or per-night thresholds to keep control.
-
Lunch or dinner under 30–50 EUR per attendee
-
Breakfast under 15 EUR per attendee
-
Hotels capped by region (e.g. up to 300 EUR per night)
4. Recurring or predictable spend
These happen regularly and usually stay consistent in value.
- Mileage expenses
- Daily allowances
-
Subscriptions and memberships
-
Training and conference fees
-
Phone bills or software licenses
-
Bank and card fees
5. Specific user groups
Some companies auto approve expenses submitted by:
-
Executives or senior managers
-
Assistants or travel coordinators
6. Micro-expenses
Some teams choose to auto approve any expense under a certain threshold (e.g. 10 EUR) to avoid spending time reviewing small items.
💡 The condition 'receipt is attached' is often added to these examples as well.