Expense approvals

What it is

The Expense Approvals screen is an admin queue listing every expense that a member has submitted but an admin has not yet approved or rejected. Each row shows the submitter, the category, the amount, the date, any attached receipt, and a set of approve / reject actions.

Approving an expense creates an expense credit transaction in the submitter’s ledger, offsetting their charges by the expense amount. Rejecting an expense simply closes the submission; no transaction is written.

Who can use it

Admin and treasurer (admin) — full access.
Members — do not see this screen. Members see the status of the expenses they submitted on My Expenses, reached from the dashboard’s My Syndicate card or from their My Balance screen.

Where to find it

In the app:

Open the syndicate.
Go to the Admin tab.
Open Pending, the admin workbench pinned at the top, and use its expenses section. There is no tile for this on the Dashboard.

Route: /syndicates/:syndicateId/expenses/pending.

Fields / options

Each row in the queue shows:

Field	Notes
Amount	The figure, in the syndicate’s currency, in bold at the top left.
Category	A chip at the top right — Fuel, Oil, Hangarage, Maintenance and so on.
Submitter	Submitted by [name], directly under the amount, because approving writes a credit to that member’s balance. No avatar.
Description	The submitter’s own note, up to five lines.
Date	The expense date chosen by the submitter, not the submission time.
Receipt	An icon and a View Receipt link, shown only when a receipt exists. There is no thumbnail. A receipt still waiting to upload from the submitter’s device shows a cloud icon and will upload when online instead of the link.
Approve	Primary action. Creates the credit transaction.
Reject	Secondary action. Closes the submission.

A Reject requires the admin to add a reason. The submitter sees it in their Expense Not Approved notification and under that expense on My Expenses, where its status reads Not approved.

Behaviour rules

Approval writes one transaction. A successful approval writes an Expense credit debit/credit entry into the submitter’s ledger. See Transaction types.
Rejection writes nothing. The submission is marked rejected, shown to the submitter as Not approved; no financial record is created.
Approve and Reject are online-only. Both buttons disable when the device is offline and surface Approval needs a connection. Try again when you’re online if tapped. They re-enable automatically when the connection returns. The queue itself is still readable offline (it reads from the synced expenses projection); only the actions are blocked.
Receipts are served via signed URLs. Like usage photos, receipts are fetched through a 15-minute signed URL, so reloading the receipt after a long pause re-issues a fresh link.
Only the claimant and admins can open a receipt. The storage server checks the expense the receipt belongs to, so another member cannot open it even with the “Share usage photos” setting on. See Usage photo privacy.
Queue is live. The list updates in real time as other admins act on expenses or as members submit new ones.
Empty state. When there is nothing to approve, the screen shows a plain centred No pending expenses in place of the list.