Approval Rules decide who needs to approve Card Payments, Budget Top-ups, Accounts Payable, and Reimbursements before money moves. This article answers common questions about rule priority, fallback behaviour, and what happens when an approver leaves, goes on leave, or submits their own request. Understanding these behaviours keeps approvals moving without unexpected gaps.
How It Works
How Approval Rules are prioritised
Approval Rules run in order, starting from Rule #1 (highest priority). Weel stops at the first rule whose filters all match and applies only that rule. This "first match wins" behaviour is the same for every payment type: Card Payments, Budget Top-ups, Accounts Payable, Reimbursements, Batch Payments, Credit Notes, and Purchase Orders.
- Tip: place more specific rules (with more filters) near the top of your list, and more general rules further down. You can reorder rules anytime by moving them up or down.
Fallback rules
- The fallback rule is the rule Weel applies automatically when none of your custom rules match a request. It can't have filters added, but you can customise the approver: an individual, a role, a group, or the Budget Owner.
- Weel automatically creates a fallback rule for you as a safety net for Budget Top-ups, Accounts Payable, and Reimbursements.
- Card Payments are the one payment type that can never have a fallback rule. This isn't just an empty default; Weel actively blocks a fallback rule from being added to a card payment policy.
What happens if no rule applies
- Budget Top-ups, Accounts Payable, and Reimbursements: the fallback rule applies, so there's always someone assigned to approve.
- Card Payments: because Card Payments can never have a fallback rule, no approval step is triggered if none of your custom rules match, and the transaction goes through without requiring approval.
When an approver leaves the business or goes on leave
- If you delete someone's profile, Weel automatically reassigns any of their pending approvals. You don't need to update your Approval Rule first, whether they were the only approver on a rule or one of several. Reassignment goes to that person's delegate approver, or the account Owner if no delegate is set (or the delegate has also been deleted). It's still good practice to check who's set as their delegate before deleting someone, since that's who inherits the pending items. Only approvals still waiting on that person move; anything they've already approved is untouched.
- If an approver is going on leave, every person has a delegate approver by default: the account Owner, until someone changes it. Owners and Admins (or anyone with the "Add and remove people" permission) can update a person's delegate approver, or set up Out-of-Office (OOO) cover, under User Management > People > [their profile] > Delegation settings.
- OOO cover is a toggle plus a start and end date. Once saved, both approvals already pending with that person and any new ones raised during the window redirect to the delegate. The start date takes effect from 12am and the end date runs until 11:59pm in the business's timezone, and the chosen delegate can't already have an overlapping OOO period of their own.
- As an alternative (or in addition) to delegation, you can also set a rule to require "Any" of two or more approvers rather than all of them, so there's always someone available even if one person is away.
Updating rules while something is pending
- Pending approvals always follow the rule that was in effect when they were triggered. Updating your rules afterward doesn't change how something already in flight gets approved.
Self-approval
Self-approval is controlled per payment type with the Prevent self-approval setting.
- On (redirected to a delegate): the default for most payment types (Budget Top-ups, Accounts Payable, Reimbursements, Card Payments, Purchase Orders). If the requester and approver are the same person, Weel redirects that approval step to the requester's delegate approver (the same delegate used for OOO cover), or the account Owner if none is set.
- Off (auto-approved): the default for Weel's built-in Batch Payment and Credit Note rules specifically, since the Owner is the sole approver on those by default and turning prevention on would leave nobody able to approve. The requester's own approval step is approved automatically, and later steps in the workflow still apply as normal.
To update it:
- Go to Approval Rules (in the Spend Management menu).
- Select the payment type you want to update.
- In the rule drawer, find the Prevent self-approval toggle.
- Turn it on or off. You can change this anytime.
Delegate approvers are set per-person in User Management > People > [their profile] > Delegation settings.
Tracking changes and adding descriptions
- The date and time of the latest update appears on the main dashboard for each approval type.
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Each rule has a description field to help keep track of it:
- Open the approval type.
- Add a description to the rule.
Good to know
- OOO delegation can only be set up in the Weel web app; it isn't available in the mobile app.
- OOO cover is a Premium and Enterprise plan feature; it isn't available on Basic.
- Once an OOO period ends, approvals redirected during that time stay with the delegate. They don't automatically move back to the original approver.