Expense Report Approval Pipeline

Overview

When an expense report is submitted through Microsoft Forms, this flow automatically routes it for approval based on amount thresholds. Approved expenses are logged to Excel, and the finance team receives notification for reimbursement processing. Rejected reports return to the submitter with reviewer comments.

Use Case

Manual expense report routing creates bottlenecks and inconsistent approval processes. Employees wait for reimbursement while reports sit in email inboxes, and finance lacks visibility into approved vs. pending expenses.

The flow is ideal for teams that:

• Automated routing based on configurable amount thresholds
• Faster approvals reduce employee reimbursement wait time
• Centralized Excel log provides finance team visibility
• Audit trail shows approval chain and reviewer comments
• Rejected reports automatically notify submitter
• Scalable across departments with role-based approvers

Flow Architecture

Environment Variables

Connectors & Connections

Note — All connections are referenced as solution connection references; the flow is portable between environments as long as a connection is mapped at import time.

Customization Guide

Almost every realistic variant of this flow can be implemented by changing environment variable values. A few cases require small edits inside the flow definition — those are called out explicitly below.

Deploying to another environment

Import the solution, then update flowlibs_ExpenseFormId with the target Forms form ID, flowlibs_ApprovedExpensesExcelFile with the target Excel path, flowlibs_RejectedExpensesExcelSheet with the rejected-sheet name, and flowlibs_FinanceTeamEmail with the finance mailbox. Adjust flowlibs_AmountThreshold if the director-routing cutoff differs, then test with a sample submission and turn the flow on.

Add receipt image attachment

Enhance the Forms trigger to support image uploads and include the attachment in the approval details so reviewers can see the receipt inline.

Create monthly summary reports

Add a scheduled companion flow that aggregates the approved-expenses Excel into per-department spend reports for finance leadership.

Add budget checking

Insert a condition that compares the submitted amount against the department's remaining budget balance (Dataverse/SharePoint lookup) before routing for approval.

Department-based routing

Branch on a 'Department' form field so approvals are routed to department-specific managers and directors rather than a single shared pair.

Receipt validation

Integrate AI Builder Form Recognizer (or OneDrive scanning) to extract receipt totals and validate them against the submitted amount before approval.

Track reimbursement processing

Create a follow-up flow triggered by finance acknowledgement to capture check/ACH processing dates and close the loop with the employee.

Key Expressions

The flow is intentionally light on Power Fx / WDL gymnastics — the heaviest expressions are the branch-name concatenation and the approval outcome check. They are listed below in the order they appear in the flow.

body('Get_response_details')?['r9b9e8f9b9']

greater(int(variables('expenseAmount')), parameters('flowlibs_AmountThreshold'))

concat('Expense Report: $', variables('expenseAmount'), ' - ', variables('expenseCategory'))

if(greater(int(variables('expenseAmount')), 500), variables('directorEmail'), variables('managerEmail'))

outputs('Start_and_wait_for_an_approval')?['body/outcome']