Delegate approvals when you're out of office

What it does

Approval Delegation transfers pending and future approvals to another user for a fixed date window. During the window, any approval policy that would route to you instead routes to your delegate. The inbox header shows a clear banner — "Approvals delegated from Simon E. until 14 Aug" — so neither side loses track of who's covering what.

The audit trail stays accurate: requests are recorded as raised against you, then resolved by the delegate (their user_id is captured on the resolution). SLA timers continue ticking against the original SLA — delegation doesn't reset due_at.

How to use it

1. Open Settings → Approval delegation and choose New delegation.
2. Pick the user you're delegating to. They must have an equal-or-higher approval role — you can't delegate up to someone without the rights to approve in the first place.
3. Set the from date (defaults to today) and until date (inclusive — the delegation is live up to and including the end of that day).
4. Optionally add a note ("Out for parental leave — Jordan is covering"). This appears on the delegate's inbox so they have context.
5. Save. Any existing pending_approval requests assigned to you within the window are reassigned immediately. Future matches route to the delegate from the from date onward.
6. The delegate sees both their own queue and the inherited items side-by-side in their Inbox. Each inherited item is labelled with the original approver's name so they can tell whose work they're covering.
7. To end the delegation early, return to Settings → Approval delegation and click Cancel. Anything still pending flips back to you on the spot.

Tips

• The delegate must outrank or equal your approval role. If you're an owner, you can't delegate to an accountant — the save errors with a clear message.
• Overlapping delegations aren't allowed. If you already have an active delegation, end it before starting a new one. Stacked delegations would make the audit trail ambiguous.
• Self-delegation is blocked. You can't delegate to yourself, and you can't be in a delegation chain that ends at the raiser of the document being approved.
• SLA doesn't reset. A 24-hour SLA stays 24 hours from the original submit time, regardless of when the delegation kicked in. Plan cover dates accordingly.
• The full delegation history is on the Manage modal — useful when an auditor asks "who actually approved this payment run on the 10th?".

Related

• Configure an approval policy
• Compose a BACS payment run
• Raise a purchase request