Best practices for role and permission-based queries via  the Payhawk MCP

Everyday lookups

• "Show me my expenses from last month."

• "Which of my expenses are missing a receipt?"

• "What's on my company card right now?"

• "List all my cards and their status."

• "What should I do next in Payhawk?"

• "What's the approval status of my expense from Tuesday?"

• "Show me my mileage claims this quarter."

• "Who's on my team, and who's still active?"

Quick actions (each previews before it runs)

• "Create a reimbursement for the 40 EUR taxi I paid for on Tuesday."

• "Submit that reimbursement for approval."

• "Add a note to expense 4569 asking Maria for the invoice."

• "Recode this expense to the Marketing cost center."

• "Request a virtual card for the new subscription."

• "Request an extra 500 EUR on my card for the conference."

• "Submit my March expense report."

• "Send Payhawk feedback that receipt upload should accept HEIC."

Receipts and documents

• "Attach this receipt to my hotel expense."

• "Here's an invoice, match it to whatever transaction it belongs to."

• "Show me the receipt on expense 4569."

Travel (nothing is booked in the chat)

• "What are my flight options to Berlin next Tuesday?"

• "Find me a flight and a hotel for the Paris trip on the 14th, under 400 EUR, arriving before noon."

• "Request the 08:40 with the flexible fare."

Product help

• "How do I set up an approval workflow for expenses over 5,000?"

• "Is this feature available on our plan?"

• "How does month-end export work in Payhawk?"

Approvals (available to everyone)

• "Triage my approvals."

Working your queue

• "Is there anything waiting on me to approve?"

• "Summarize my approval queue."

• "Walk me through my approval queue and act on each one."

Acting on items

• "Approve the fund request on card X."

• "Approve the ATM request from Petar, but return Maria's expense asking for the invoice."

• "Approve PO INV-148123."

• "Approve or return the expense reports sitting with me."

Delegation and team spend

• "I'm out next week, make Ivan my substitute approver."

• "Clear my out-of-office delegate."

• "Show me what my team spent last month."

Close and reconciliation

• "What's blocking the close this month?"

• "Which expenses are missing a category, tax code, or receipt?"

• "How much expense value is reviewed but still waiting to export to our accounting system?"

• "Which expenses can't be cleanly exported, and how much is that?"

• "Show me what's still unexported for this supplier this month."

• "Work through the review queue and mark these 20 reviewed."

• "Return expense 4569 so I can recode it."

• "Recode this Uber charge to Travel and set the cost center to Sales."

• "Show me the audit trail for expense 4569."

• "Which exports failed, and why?"

VAT, receipts, and audit

• "Are we chasing receipts we shouldn't have to?"

• "What's our total per diem and mileage spend over the last 12 months, by employee?"

• "Which expenses over 15,000 EUR came from our Lithuanian entities in 2025?"

• "Show me all expenses marked paid between 1 March and 30 April, grouped by approver."

Playbooks

• "Walk me through closing the month."

• "Review these expenses."

• "Give me the spend report for Q2 with the charts."

• "Where is our spend coded inconsistently, and what should the default be?"

• "Where is the close bottlenecked, and how long does each stage take by team?"

• "Surface unusual spend this month and let me query the owners."

Trends and top spend

• "How much did we spend on travel last quarter, by team, and what drove the increase?"

• "How is card spend trending, and who are the biggest spenders?"

• "Top 10 suppliers this year by EUR-equivalent."

• "What is the single largest expense this month?"

• "Compare card spend this month vs the same month last year, by category and team."

Cost saving and waste

• "Where are we overspending on software subscriptions?"

• "How many of our issued cards are sitting unused?"

• "Are we paying any supplier twice?"

Balances, budgets, and treasury

• "What's our current wallet balance across all accounts?"

• "What's our current cash position across currencies and entities?"

• "How are we tracking against the Marketing budget this quarter, actuals vs plan?"

• "Show me the deposits and top-ups that landed this month."

• "Give me the bank statement feed for the EUR account, newest first."

• "What committed payments are due on this fund account in the next 30 days?"

Charts (rendered inline)

• "Monthly spend trend, converted to GBP, as a chart."

• "By calendar quarter, show card spend, deposits, AP payments, and FX fees, converted to GBP."

Playbooks

• "When will our balance run low at the current spend rate?"

• "Where does our cash actually sit right now?"

• "Which budgets are trending to overspend, and why?"

• "Give me the group rollup across all entities."

Suppliers and requests

• "Give me the full spend picture for this supplier: total, trend, open commitments, unpaid bills, recurring charges."

• "Do we have any duplicate suppliers set up under slightly different names?"

• "Which vendors are we paying more than a set amount a month across the group, and are any duplicated across entities?"

• "Create a supplier record for Acme Ltd with this tax ID and country."

• "Update Acme's contact email."

• "What POs were open as of 31 March: committed vs invoiced vs remaining?"

• "List all expenses linked to PO INV-148123 and how much of the budget is consumed."

• "Draft a purchase order for the new laptops from our usual supplier."

• "Close PO INV-148123."

Subscriptions, bills, and payments

• "Give me all upcoming subscription renewals in the next 60 days, with vendor, amount, and renewal date."

• "Which subscriptions are active, duplicated, or getting more expensive?"

• "Confirm this Notion charge as a subscription."

• "What bills are due this week?"

• "What's the status of the payment to this supplier?"

Playbooks

• "Give me a full profile of this supplier to prep a negotiation."

• "Take this supplier from five records down to one."

Cards, policies, and controls

• "Show declined card transactions: are spend policies blocking legitimate spend?"

• "Which cards have stand-alone limits not covered by any spend policy?"

• "List all ATM and cash-withdrawal transactions in the last 90 days, by cardholder and entity."

• "Show me the spend policies we have and what each one allows."

• "Freeze every card belonging to this person."

• "Which of our card limits don't match how people actually spend?"

Value and adoption

• "How do we compare to similar companies, and which of our entities is lagging?"

• "Which vendors we pay by bank transfer accept cards?"

Offboarding

• "Wind down this leaver's cards, spend, and approvals."

Across entities

• "Across all entities, what are the pending actions today: expenses to review, requests to approve, invoices to pay?"

• "What did we spend across all our entities last month, in EUR?"

• "Show total spend per entity for Q1, with month-over-month variance."

• "Compare our entities on spend and growth, give me a group league table."