How finance leaders keep control across entities and locations

With just one entity, most approval flows rely on a level of trust and collective memory. A manager knows the spend is okay. The CFO has the final oversight. Everything is close enough that you can usually stay in sync without much effort.

Once you introduce multiple entities, that logic falls apart. You suddenly have to deal with so much more:

• Intercompany transactions.
• Different local tax environments.
• Variations in chart structures (even small ones cause huge friction).
• Local managers with different habits and ways of working.
• Email approvals scattered across several different inboxes.

Teams end up working harder, but they get much less visibility in return. That’s the moment finance leaders realise that control is not about more effort. It is, and always has been, about consistency.

We see it in the data all the time: approval bottlenecks rise sharply once organisations move past three entities. And the real kicker? Most teams only discover this problem when their month-end deadline starts slipping, or when audit preparation becomes a frantic scramble.

In a multi-entity environment, the CFO frequently becomes the last line of defence. It works for a while, perhaps. Then, volumes increase. Approvals start to stack up and stack up. People wait for sign-off across different time zones. Bookkeeping is delayed because literally nothing moves until one person types the word “approved.”

Several leaders I’ve spoken with have shared the same insight: a bottleneck at the top isn’t a leadership issue. It’s actually a structural issue. If your process requires a single person to remember, check, or chase something, you haven’t built a control system. You’ve just created a dependency.

Finance leaders who scale their operations well move away from people-based approvals and towards policy-based approvals. They set the rules by supplier, department, role, or spend level. They don’t set them by a name.

ApprovalMax is designed to build those rules right into the workflow, so the system handles the routing and chasing instead of relying on the CFO’s inbox. You replace chasing with genuine clarity.

When teams work across different locations, the hardest part of the job isn't the approvals themselves. It’s the constant, maddening variation. One entity codes travel to one account. Another codes it somewhere else entirely. Some attach the necessary documents. Others forget. Some follow the rules strictly. Others hope it's "close enough."

Consistency is the oxygen that makes multi-entity reporting possible. Leaders who manage this well rely on three foundations:

• A standard chart of accounts: One structure across all entities, full stop. No local improvisation allowed.

• Clear approval workflows: Each step is defined by policy, not by habit or historical preference.

• Documented roles and access: Everyone needs to know exactly what they are permitted to approve, see, or enter into the system.

You cannot fix a reporting issue at the reporting stage — you fix it at the process stage. That accuracy you need comes from discipline. And discipline, in finance, comes from clarity.

Every finance leader wants real-time reporting, but very few feel genuinely confident that they have it. The gap here isn’t about the tools; it’s about timing.

Without consistent approvals, invoices get stuck. Without a clear audit trail, reviewers can’t fully trust that the numbers are complete. Without standard workflows, every entity ends up running at its own pace. Trying to achieve real-time data becomes impossible.

Teams that use systems like ApprovalMax often find that spend visibility improves long before month-end even rolls around. Approvals move faster. Documents stay attached to transactions. Managers make better decisions earlier on. And the result? Month-end becomes a review, not a frantic reconstruction.

When you spread your operations across locations, you need that level of immediate visibility to stay ahead of commitments, not constantly playing catch-up behind them.

The best finance leaders design controls that still work perfectly when the business unexpectedly grows by fifty per cent. They approach their controls differently.

Here are four things they prioritise:

1. Map the process first. Before even looking at tools, they draw out the flow. Who receives what? Who approves what? Where are the current delays? What must be standardised immediately?

2. Automate the predictable parts. Anything repetitive should run on iron-clad rules: coding rules, approval rules, delegation rules. Control doesn't come from extra, fiddly checks. It comes from having fewer manual points of failure.

3. Keep the system lean. Controls are only effective if people actually use them. Great leaders minimise steps, reduce exceptions, and avoid over-designing the process until it's too complicated to follow.

4. Stay in review mode. Controls age quickly. A process that worked seamlessly with two entities will probably fail at six. Leaders revisit workflows, delegation settings, and current bottlenecks on a regular, consistent basis.

The simple, powerful theme across all these successful finance operations is this: the system should do the heavy lifting, not the people.

Every multi-entity finance challenge eventually comes back to the same fundamental truth: you cannot control what you cannot see.

Control isn't actually a burden. It is the opposite. When rules are clear and approvals run consistently, everyone moves faster and with more confidence. Reporting becomes reliable. Audits become calmer. Month-end becomes shorter. And your teams can finally stop chasing documents and start analysing the data.

Finance leaders who genuinely understand this protect themselves from becoming the bottleneck the business relies on. They focus on building systems that scale with them, instead of trying to build systems that rely solely on them.