Process family
Spend governance: seven approval and decision templates for committing money
Seven flowcharts for deciding whether money may be committed: the annual budget, budget approval, purchase approval by threshold, expense approval, conflict-of-interest review, fixed asset controls and the make-or-buy decision tree.
Spend governance is the set of gates a request passes before anyone is allowed to commit the company's money: is it in the plan, who holds the authority for this value and category, is the decision-maker conflicted, and should the thing be bought at all. This family groups the templates that make those decisions. It is a group rather than a sequence; a purchase, an expense claim and a capital project each pass through a different subset.
The plan comes first. The annual budget turns finance assumptions and department submissions into a challenged, approved plan; the budget approval workflow handles the costed requests that arrive in-year: funding check, forecast impact, delegated-authority routing, a published decision. When the request is a purchase, purchase approval classifies it as capex or opex, checks the budget, routes it by value and category through the delegation-of-authority matrix, applies the quote and preferred-supplier rules, and ends in a purchase order or a recorded decline. Employee spend takes the expense approval route instead.
The failures all pass on paper: a purchase signed by a manager whose limit it exceeds, a supplier approved by someone who part-owns it, an asset expensed to skip the capital appraisal, a budget line spent twice on a forecast nobody updated. Purchase approval's escalate branch and capex-or-opex test catch the first and third; the conflict of interest decision tree settles recusal, reassignment or escalation before approval; budget approval's forecast-impact check answers the fourth. Fixed asset management owns capitalization and disposal; make-or-buy tests core capability, capacity, fully loaded cost and IP risk before sourcing starts.
Once a purchase clears these gates it becomes a requisition and an order in procure-to-pay; once an expense claim clears its approval it is paid through payroll or in the same run as supplier invoices under accounts payable. The actual-versus-plan review that closes the budget loop is a step in the financial close, where fixed asset depreciation and impairment are also posted.
Templates in this family
- Annual budget process flowchart — Annual budget process flowchart for finance assumptions, department submissions, consolidation, challenge, management approval, publication and actual-versus-plan review.
- Budget approval workflow template — Budget approval workflow template for validating a costed request, checking funding and forecast impact, routing by delegated authority, and publishing the decision.
- Purchase approval process flowchart (approval matrix by threshold) — Purchase approval process flowchart template: capex vs opex classification, budget check, delegation-of-authority approval matrix, competitive quotes threshold, preferred supplier check and specialist review.
- Expense approval process flowchart — A swimlane expense approval process template: receipt and policy check, line manager approval, value thresholds, duplicate check, VAT coding and payment.
- Conflict of interest review process decision tree — Conflict of interest review process decision tree: actual or perceived, interest type, live decision, recusal or reassignment, escalation and review dates.
- Fixed asset management process flowchart — Fixed asset management process flowchart for capitalisation assessment, asset registration, depreciation, physical verification, transfer, impairment and disposal controls.
- Make or buy decision flowchart (decision tree) — Make or buy decision flowchart: a decision tree on core capability, capacity, fully loaded cost, IP risk and supply market, ending at five named outcomes.
- Procurement approval workflow — Editable procurement approval workflow swimlane from “Request purchase” through “Budget and coding valid?” to a documented outcome. Includes named roles, exception paths and evidence.
- Procurement exception process — Editable procurement exception process swimlane from “Identify departure from standard route” through “Reason supported by evidence?” to a documented outcome. Includes named roles, exception paths and evidence.
- Emergency procurement process — Editable emergency procurement process swimlane from “Confirm immediate operational or safety need” through “Can existing stock or contract meet need?” to a documented outcome. Includes named roles, exception paths and evidence.
- Procurement savings tracking process — Editable procurement savings tracking process swimlane from “Define baseline volume, price and scope” through “Baseline supported by actual evidence?” to a documented outcome. Includes named roles, exception paths and evidence.
- Procurement KPI review process — Editable procurement kpi review process swimlane from “Extract spend, cycle-time and exception data” through “Data trustworthy for reporting?” to a documented outcome. Includes named roles, exception paths and evidence.
Used in these industries
Related guides
- How to Show a Board or Committee on an Org Chart — Show governance bodies on an org chart without turning them into managers: board, committees and volunteers, built on a nonprofit chart and checked against a budget approval.
- How to map an approval process — How to map an approval process so the map is worth opening: where the authority limit sits, what a refusal actually does to the request, and who decides when the approver is away.
- Create an Approval Workflow from Excel — Build an expense-approval workflow from a spreadsheet with policy checks, manager approval, finance review, returns and final outcomes.