Delegated approval authority register and expiry tracker
Problem
Who is allowed to approve what is written down in a scheme of delegation: a document, usually a PDF, listing named individuals and their sign-off thresholds. It is reviewed "annually" in the sense that someone is supposed to. Meanwhile the finance and ERP system's actual user permissions are set once, when someone joins or changes role, and rarely touched again. A budget holder promoted eighteen months ago may still carry their old limit in the system. Someone covering for a colleague on leave gets a verbal nod and an email, with no record of when that cover should end. When an auditor asks who approved a payment and under what authority, the answer is a scramble through old emails and whoever remembers.
Product idea
A register of who holds delegated approval authority, at what threshold, from when and until when, including temporary cover arranged for leave or travel. Each entry has an owner and a re-certification date. The finance manager gets a reminder before an entry lapses, and the financial controller signs off the renewal rather than the register quietly going stale. A discrepancy view lets the controller record where an ERP permission does not match the current signed register, so the mismatch is visible before an auditor finds it rather than after. It does not change permissions inside the finance or ERP system itself: closing a gap it finds still means someone logging in and updating a user role.
Who it is for
Finance managers who maintain the scheme of delegation, financial controllers who sign off re-certifications, and procurement leads who need to confirm a named approver's authority before releasing a payment.
Possible first version
A register of named approvers with threshold, effective date, expiry date and a free-text cover reason, entered and edited manually. Automatic reminders to the finance manager ahead of each expiry, a controller sign-off step to re-certify, and a simple "held authority as at this date" lookup for any name, exportable as a PDF for an auditor. Version one has no connection to the ERP's actual permission settings and no automated matching against approval logs; confirming that the system matches the register is a manual check the controller performs at re-certification.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Finance manager, Financial controller, Procurement lead
- Relevant to
- Professional club, League office, Federation / governing body, Venue & stadium operator
- Systems in play
- Finance and ERP systems, Spreadsheets, Procurement and purchase order systems
- Product framing
- Manage compliance
Questions we get asked
We already have a scheme of delegation document. Why do we need another system for it?
The document does not disappear and this does not try to replace it as the formal, signed record. What is missing today is not the document, it is the discipline of catching when it has gone stale. A scheme of delegation reviewed "annually" in theory but not in practice is common. This adds the reminder, the re-certification step, and a place to record where the ERP's actual permissions have drifted from what the document says. If your review discipline is already reliable, the value here is smaller.
What do we need to have ready before this is useful?
The current scheme of delegation or equivalent policy, a list of named approvers with their thresholds and effective dates, and someone willing to own the register and act on the reminders it sends. None of that needs to live in a clean spreadsheet first: version one is built for entering it directly. What it cannot do is infer thresholds from your ERP system on its own; that comparison is a manual step the controller performs.
Does this stop someone approving a payment above their delegated limit?
No, not in version one. It is a register and an audit trail, not a control sitting inside your approval workflow. Enforcement still lives in your finance or ERP system's own permission settings and approval routing. What this adds is visibility: a place that shows what a person's authority was on a given date, so a mismatch between the record and what the system actually allowed is caught at re-certification rather than by an auditor months later.
Who ends up owning this once it exists?
Typically the finance manager maintains the register day to day and the financial controller signs off each re-certification. That is a real recurring task, not a one-off setup: someone has to act on the reminder, chase down whether a permission still matches, and update the record when a person changes role. If nobody treats re-certification as a task with an owner, the register goes stale in the same way the original document did.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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