how-structured-approvals-change-finance-work
Dec 29, 2025

What finance teams spend more time on once approvals are structured

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To the Max
5 min read
Table of Contents
Spend control with ApprovalMax for Xero
Spend control with ApprovalMax for Xero
Learn how structured approvals, clear audit trails, and a modern app stack reduce manual work and give your team full visibility over every expense.
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Spend control with ApprovalMax for QuickBooks Online
Spend control with ApprovalMax for QuickBooks Online
A simple framework for controlling spend in QBO, improving accuracy, and maintaining confidence in every financial decision.
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Most finance teams think they know what structured approvals will change. Fewer emails. Faster sign offs. Cleaner audit trails. All of that is certainly true. What usually comes as a surprise is how much time finance actually gets back and where that energy finally goes.

Once approvals are no longer managed through overflowing inboxes and memory, the nature of finance work changes shape. The work does not disappear; it simply moves upstream. It becomes calmer, more deliberate, and far more useful to the business.

Key Takeaways

• Structured approvals remove coordination work that finance quietly carries.

• Time shifts from chasing people to reviewing patterns and risks.

• Visibility changes conversations before money moves, not after.

• Finance teams spend more time supporting decisions, not clearing blockages.

• Control becomes predictable, which frees attention for higher value work.

Why so much time was lost before approvals were structured

Before structure exists, finance tends to absorb a vast amount of invisible work. This includes following up on emails, checking who approved what, reattaching documents, and clarifying coding after the fact. None of this feels like a single, massive problem, but together these tasks consume hours every week.

In growing teams, especially those working across multiple entities or locations, this coordination becomes a default finance responsibility. Other teams move on to their next task while finance stays behind to tidy up the trail. Structured approval workflows remove that burden. When the system knows the rules and tracks the path, finance no longer has to act as manual traffic control.

We see this shift make a massive difference for teams like KeepCup, who managed to cut their bill processing time by 50%. Similarly, The Icehouse saved about 15 to 20 hours every month just by automating these workflows. Even for firms like CloudFox, moving away from manual chasing meant they could handle a high volume of documents without the usual stress. It turns a messy, manual process into something that just works in the background.

Where the time actually goes after structure is in place

Once approvals are predictable, finance attention shifts in noticeable ways.

The first change is the reduction in interruptions. When approvers see exactly what they need at the right time, fewer questions land on finance desks. That alone creates longer blocks of focused time for high-value work. This time usually goes into reviewing spend patterns rather than individual transactions. Finance teams start noticing trends earlier, such as which suppliers spike unexpectedly or which departments are consistently drifting away from their monthly budgets.

ApprovalMax supports this shift by making approval data visible and reportable. Instead of asking whether a specific item was approved, finance can look at how approvals behave over time.

More time spent on risk, not reminders

One of the biggest gains is the time spent on risk awareness. When approvals are logged properly, finance teams can focus on exceptions rather than routine items. This might include duplicate invoices, changes to supplier bank details, or spend that falls outside expected patterns.

In unstructured workflows, these risks are harder to spot because the context is scattered across different threads. Once approvals are structured, patterns surface naturally. Finance stops reacting to problems late and starts spotting them early. This is where approval tools quietly change the role of finance — control shifts from enforcement to observation.

Better conversations before money moves

Structured approvals also change the timing of internal conversations. Instead of explaining budget overruns after the month end, finance teams start having discussions much earlier. This happens during the approval process, before budgets are breached, and while decisions are still flexible.

Approvers see the full context at the moment they act, including coding, attachments, and the current budget position. That context reduces rework and avoids those defensive conversations that often happen too late. As our CFO Dan Schonfeld points out, most plans go out of date within weeks, so the real value lies in catching forecast drift as it happens rather than looking at a static document. ApprovalMax plays a role here by connecting approvals directly to accounting data, so decisions are informed without finance needing to step in for every single request.

Less firefighting at month end

Month end pressure often comes from unresolved approvals and missing documentation. Once approvals are structured, many of those issues simply stop appearing. Finance teams report fewer last-minute surprises, fewer invoices discovered too late, and fewer explanations needed for decisions that no longer feel fresh in the memory.

The close becomes quieter. It is not necessarily faster at any cost, but it becomes much more predictable. That predictability is what creates the breathing room finance teams need to actually think.

More time supporting leadership decisions

With less time spent on the mechanics of coordination, finance teams spend more time supporting leadership. This includes scenario reviews, cash flow planning, and helping managers understand how spend actually connects to outcomes. These conversations are only possible when finance is not buried in operational cleanup.

Structured approvals create reliable data that leaders can trust. When the data is trusted, finance input carries more weight in the boardroom.

What does not change even with structure

Structured approvals do not remove the need for professional judgement. They do not replace finance experience, nor do they eliminate the need for careful review. What they remove is the exhausting repetition, such as the same questions, the same follow-ups, and the same manual explanations. Finance judgement actually becomes more visible because it is no longer diluted by administrative work.

Why this matters as teams scale

As businesses grow, finance work naturally becomes more complex with more entities, categories, and stakeholders. Without structure, that complexity lands entirely on finance shoulders. With structure, complexity is distributed across systems that handle it consistently.

ApprovalMax is often introduced at this stage to prevent finance from becoming a bottleneck as volume increases. It allows the function to grow alongside the business rather than being overwhelmed by it.

quote icon | approvalmax
“Automating approvals and processes can save a lot of time and, therefore, money. One of our customers with 30 staff actually reduced costs by 39,000 AUD per year. We measure the time spent, so, the larger a business is, the bigger the savings.”
Trent-Todd-3
Trent Todd
Technical Director at Tinka Consulting

The takeaway

When approvals are structured, finance teams do not necessarily work fewer hours, but they work differently. Time moves away from chasing and towards understanding; away from coordination and towards insight; and away from reacting late and towards shaping decisions early.