Create out-of-office approvals for expenses and fund requests

Holiday or not, you don't want to drive your company's agility to a halt, so you put your cocktail down and start approving. The good news? With Payhawk, you can avoid this situation entirely by enabling the out-of-office feature while you're out of action.

With our out-of-office feature, you can select pre-defined business rules for your colleagues to follow when you're away from the office to avoid delays or confusion. You can set up approvals so they get automatically approved, or you can assign the approval to another colleague while you're away instead of trying to respond to every single request that flies at you.

Approve fund requests and expenses even when out of the office

Our out-of-office feature is super convenient for businesses of all sizes and helps finance teams and team leads stay in control of spend, even when they're away.

The feature lets you create a list of users to replace another user when they are away from their desk/work. Your admins can manage the list by selecting one or multiple users from an existing user group or manually adding new users.

The out-of-office feature also lets you:

1. Choose who should approve expenses while you're out of the office (team lead, manager, or admin) and designate a specific date and timeline for them to handle employee expense approvals and fund requests
2. Disable push notifications for the usual approver while out of the office, whether they're an admin, team lead, or finance manager
3. Ensure that approvers don't have to approve expenses and fund requests when they are away

Replacement reviews and approvals

Choosing another team member to approve requests while you're away? It's easy; you can use the out-of-office feature to select who will approve in your absence and how long this will last. Your chosen colleagues can then review and approve any requests as necessary, and you know that things are running smoothly.

Your chosen replacement will receive all prior requests you may have had so it’s not just new ones that you keep moving. Requests will transfer back to the original approver if they haven't been approved by the end date.

Cover vacation and sick leave approvals

Employees are the most important part of an organisation and can make or break its success. Successful companies need people who will work hard and propel it towards its goals. However, even the best people need to go on vacation and sometimes get sick, so it's essential to implement a system that will allow someone else to take over their responsibilities and help avoid any disruption.

As an admin, you can assign temporary approver replacements for employees who are away from work for various reasons. You can do this by enabling the out-of-office mode for employees and setting the temporary replacements for a particular time period. This will help ensure that there's no disruption in your organisation's workflow during those times when an employee is away from work.

Supporting month-end close

Financial management and accounting are vital for any organisation. And preparing for month-end close is an essential part of every finance team's cycle. That's why month-end can be so stressful, especially when finance teams are racing to allocate spend in the right month and struggling to perform bank reconciliations with missing information.

At Payhawk, our out-of-office feature supports finance teams to close the month more efficiently. There's no need to delay expense approvals and end up recording spend in the wrong month or missing visibility over cash flow. Organisations can easily configure the out-of-office approval workflows to run effectively even when the normal approvers and admins are absent.

Our out-of-office feature can benefit your organisation in multiple ways, including:

1. Expense and invoicing processes – Your business can approve requests faster (as they're not delayed by absence or vacation). A notification email is sent to the requester once their request has been approved by the stand-in replacement, which allows them to send out invoices immediately and get expenses processed asap.
2. Monthly budgeting and forecasting processes – Managers and team leads can assess the health of their budgets and pull any necessary levers in order to reroute cash flow or make savings. And now, they don't have to wait around for colleagues to return from holiday to get the full picture of how much has been spent.
3. Employee spending ability – By dealing with requests for funds while people are out of the office, you’ll stop your employees from spending out of pocket and also help them keep their important projects moving.

Save time and stress

The out-of-office feature is a real-time saver for Payhawk customers and helps boost vital real-time spend management, control, and visibility. Plus, approvers can now enjoy their cocktails in peace, safe in the knowledge that they set predefined business rules, replacement approvers, and approval workflows before they leave.

Learn how Payhawk's full suite of corporate cards and expense management features (including out-of-office) could help your business save time and improve efficiency. Book a demo today.