Expense Approval Queue

Manual expense approval over email or paper is a significant administrative burden for coordinators and creates delays in reimbursing peer mentors, which erodes volunteer motivation. A structured queue removes ambiguity about what needs action, reduces processing time, and ensures no claim is lost or forgotten. For organizations with high activity volumes - HLF cited one peer mentor with 380 registrations in a year - an auditable digital approval workflow is essential for compliance and accounting reconciliation. The queue feeds directly into Bufdir reporting and accounting system exports, meaning approval accuracy has downstream financial consequences. Providing approvers with a clear, filterable interface also reduces training overhead and error rates, and the mandatory rejection comment creates a feedback loop that helps peer mentors correct submissions on resubmission.

Backend exposes a paginated REST endpoint returning expense claims scoped to the authenticated approver's organization, with query parameters for status, date range, and submitter ID. The approval and rejection actions are separate POST endpoints that write to the expense_claims table (status, approved_by, approved_at, rejection_reason) and enqueue a notification event. The admin portal renders the queue as a server-side-rendered Next.js page with optimistic UI updates on approve/reject actions. The Flutter mobile app does not expose this flow; it is admin-portal-only. Bulk approve sends a single batch request to avoid N+1 API calls. All mutations are wrapped in database transactions to ensure claim status and audit log entries are written atomically. Role guard middleware enforces that only Coordinator and Org Admin roles can access approval endpoints.