What's new in Expense Agent: Improved Approval Process

0:05 Welcome to Business Central Launch Edition 2026 Wave 2. And welcome to this session about what's new in approval process in expense agent. So, it will be an overview about some features and we will go deep dive into some of them. What actually we have new about approval process? First, we have AI-driven approval policies. I will just make a short overview about it because we will have separate session about this process completely so you can go deep dive there. Then, I want to emphasize enhanced and hastened approval history and audit trail.

0:41 So, this is really important. This is not only how you can approve, when you can approve, but how deep you can go to find all these changes in the system. Then, we enable interior approvers and some other improvements as well. So, let's start with the first. First is, as I said, AI-driven approval policies. So, what is about? Admin can enable AI-driven approval policies in setup. So, this is only if you enable because it can make some additional spending of your AI tokens. Then, expense policies must be configured per expense category.

1:17 So, as you can see on this screen, you can specify for each category where you want to use, but what is important? Expense policies usage and AI usage will not be used for all your categories. So, if you have expense report with I don't know, for example, 12 lines, AI will you will be used only for these lines where you have configured approval policies. Because for some of them, they are really clear, they are easy for overview, so you do not need to use this smart tool everywhere. So, only where you really need, for example, for air air flight tickets, this is important when you can book business or economic class,

1:54 where you can upgrade. For then for a hotel stay, when you can book hotel with a five stars and so on. So, this is how you can use and you can configure only where you really need. Uh this is uh additional recommended to use itemization for all expenses to get the best results because system can get the best results from your receipt to understand if you properly used uh money from your company only if you have uh look into all details from this receipt. And this is on the end it helped to approvers. So, it will work automatically if you enable for your approvers. So, approvers will see if some of expenses if flagged or not before final approval.

2:36 It will not block approvers. So, you can even uh approve even if this uh expense is flagged, but this is something what will help approvers to make smarter decision. >> [clears throat] >> But, it can be also used by submitters as employees. So, I can run manually. It will not be done automatically, but I can run manually to see in advance if my expense is compliance or not. So, let's switch to another topic. And here's approval history and audit trail. So, now I will go directly to demo to show what we have. Okay, now I am in my expense agent uh web app.

3:11 And if I look into my history, now you can see I have more tabs here. So, I have draft, submitted, approved, history. So, this is what all employees have. But, if you are in the same time approver, you will see for my approval and approve history. This is only uh what approvers can see. But, now this is not a topic. I want to look as a on my side as a submitter what I have here. So, in my history, I can see this one expense and I can go into details. When I look into details, I can see here that I created this September 16th 8:49 and submitted the same time. This is still not approved. So, I can see all the all changes what happened in the meantime.

3:50 But, if I go deeper, I will go this one. And then you can see much more information. What happened here? September 11, created by Alexander. 12 minutes later, this is submitted for approval. And then it was rejected 5 days after that because approver, in this case, I am the same a person who rejected, but this is a place where you can see your approval name and you will get justification or justification ex- explanation why this is rejected.

4:22 So, please confirm flight ticket class. So, this is a reason. So, you have all this information added. And then when I resubmitted, I can see my message from my approver again and the justification in the system. So, you can see all these changes even if I made some changes in amounts, reimbursement amount, everything will be tracked here. And on the end you will see that this is approved 1 minute later after I resubmitted the last time. So, you can see all these changes here. And on the end, you can see here different color and different letters.

4:59 Why? Because now this is posted. Uh what is the difference in general? Here before posted, this is everything what was done in a web app in Expense Agent directly, but now you know um you must be Business Central user to be able to post. And this is why we have this is Business Central uh username and this is different color. So, this is posted by Business Central user and okay, again amounts, when it's posted and all these details.

5:29 So, this is what we have in a web app. But now, let's look what we have in a Business Central app. So, I want to show what I have here in a Business Central. So, if I take one of my expenses here, for example, this one. If I go inside, you will see here that I history here as well. So, this is the same history regardless if you're in a busy central on a web app. What is different? You in web app it is exposed to all regardless if you're busy central or user or not. So, this is exposed there. You You just need to be busy central busy You just need to be expense user to see it.

6:08 But, if you're in the same time busy central user or your accountant whoever with a rights to open app in a busy central, you can see the same history here. So, you can see that this is created exactly time and date other details, when it is submitted, and the same thing will appear if this is a posted. If I turn to another expense report there is nothing here because it was not submitted. So, you can see that history can be changed. Now, this is again created, submitted. So, you can see this history either expense report or posted expense report.

6:45 Now, I want to show what will come in next minor. And this news is important in some more complex scenario of approvals. And what is about? This is about enable interim approvers. So, from next minor from November in some situations, you need more approvers. So, how to resolve this? And why we need more approvers? Because you have final approval as your manager. But, sometimes someone need to check your expense report against compliance reasons if this is everything is a legal.

7:18 So, if there is no any problem about expense report, so you can use for example accountant or you can use any other person who needs to review before final approval. So, you can add your interim approver in expense report and interim approver must approve before final approver. So, this is what we will have from next version. And in the future, we have a plan to add more options for approval in the approval process. But, just stay tuned and you will see what we're coming about in the approvals.

7:48 Other approvals, so now I I just mentioned some other approvals again uh coming from uh November 29.1. Better messaging during approval process. So, you will see completely different messages when you reject uh when you approve, so we have different icons, different colors, so you can you can work much easier with your or workflow with approvals. And then uh what else? This is again based on your feedback, you will have approval limits. So, in this moment, we have approver or not.

8:22 So, if you are approver, you can approve everything. But, from uh November uh minor, you will be able to set up approver with a uh with a maximum approval amount, for example, $2,000, and you can set up unlimited. So, you will have two levels, one will be uh have specific amount, another uh unlimited. You can specify only unlimited, so it will behave the same way as we have right now, but if you have different levels, you can you can make this way. But, what is important, you can have multi you cannot have multiple levels, so you cannot have one uh for 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, so you will have one uh with a specific amount, and you need to have who is next in a charge with unlimited.

9:03 So, this is what we will have with approval limits. And um additionally one, we will have alternate and delegated approvers. So, this is important, and this is again based on feedback, and we will have two options. First option is ad hoc alternate approver. What does it mean? Um I'm from this moment, if I'm a sick leave and I approver, I can easily delegate all expense reports on my name sent to me to approve to some of my colleagues who can approve. What is important, I can delegate and I can use alternate approvers only if they are set up as approvers, so if they are not approvers, they cannot be uh used for approving as delegated. So, I can send to my colleague and all expense reports will be redirected from me to another colleague.

9:46 So, this is ad hoc for already sent expense report for approving. But, for plan alternate approvers, this is different. So, I'm planning to go vacation in 2 weeks and I will be home 1 month outside of office. So, I can make plan alternate approver from for example, from October 1st until the end of October, I will choose who will approve instead of me. So, system will automatically redirect all expense reports to this new alternate approver. So, this is what how we will have about alternate and delegated approvers from November.

10:22 And I just wanted to mention travel request approval. So, this is new. We have separate session about travel request, so you can go there and see what is about, but this is new option we are adding as well about approvals. So, that's it about approvals, but stay tuned because in next wave, we will deliver more and more improvements in approvals. So, thank you for watching this video.