When inviting employees to join your teams, you'll need to assign them a Payhawk role and, if necessary, extend their permissions by further assigning them as Team Managers or Executive Assistants. These roles and role extensions define your employees' permissions and visibility access to the company's expense and spend data within Payhawk.
General visibility rules in Payhawk
Assigning a Payhawk role to an employee defines their specific visibility rights. Payhawk limits access to expenses, requests, and expense reports based on certain conditions:
Employees who've been assigned the Payhawk Employee role can only view expenses or requests they have personally submitted.
Employees who've been assigned the Team Manager role extension can access expenses, cards, and requests associated with their teams.
Employees who've been assigned the Executive Assistant role extension can access expenses, cards, and requests of the executive to whom they’ve been assigned.
Certain roles, such as Payhawk Administrators, can submit expenses on behalf of other employees.
Changes made to the Payhawk role of an employee will only impact their visibility for future expenses. Existing workflows and approvals for previously submitted expenses will remain unaffected.
Expenses submitted without a proper team assignment may interrupt approval workflows. By default, these expenses are routed to Payhawk administrators for approval. For more details, see the article about workflow fallbacks.
Team-based visibility
Employee access to team-related expenses, cards, and requests in Payhawk is determined by their assigned role, their association with specific teams, and whether they've been assigned the Team Manager role extension. For more information, see the details about the Payhawk role extensions.
Role changes and account modifications
When the assigned Payhawk role of an employee is changed (for example, from Employee to Accountant), the employee's visibility rights will be updated accordingly. However, approval workflows are only affected for expenses submitted after the change. This approach ensures that existing workflows for previously submitted expenses remain intact and are not disrupted.
Modifications to account settings, such as changes to payment methods or card assignments, may temporarily affect how expense reports are displayed. To avoid disruptions, make sure that all transactions are properly linked and up to date.
Best practices for expense submission and proper routing
To maintain accurate visibility and ensure expenses are routed correctly for approval, follow these best practices:
Employees have to always complete all mandatory fields, particularly the Team field, before submitting an expense. Missing or incorrect information can disrupt both visibility and the approval workflow.
If an expense has been routed incorrectly, owners need to ask for it to be returned, update the necessary fields, and resubmit it. This will trigger a refreshed approval workflow based on the corrected information.