Audience: System administrators and implementation owners
Setting up departments
Departments group your people, and are used across the application to route approvals and report on spend.
Where to find them
Administration → Departments. The page counts Total Departments, Active Departments and Inactive Departments.
Adding departments
Add Department — create one at a time.
Department Bulk Upload — load many at once, useful during setup.
What a department record holds
Each department has a Department Name, a Dept Code such as DEPT-4515-0001, a Head of Department (HOD), a status and a created date. The department code is generated for you and includes your organisation code.
Assign a head of department
The HOD field can sit empty, and shows as N/A when it does. Because departmental approval routes to the head of department, leaving this unset is a common reason for requests appearing to stall — set it during setup rather than later.
Where departments are used
On expense reports, as the Department field.
On payment requests, shown in the request details.
On user records, alongside the person's role and branch.
In reporting, for example Purchase Request by Department.
Note: Spendive ships with a standard set of 22 departments covering functions such as Finance & Accounting, Human Resources, Procurement & Purchasing and Supply Chain & Logistics. Adjust these to match your organisation rather than working around them.
Managing locations
Locations record the physical places your organisation operates from, and distinguish offices from storage sites.
Where to find them
Administration → Locations. The page counts Total Locations, Active Locations and Inactive Locations.
Creating a location
Select Create Location.
Enter the name and address.
Choose the type.
Save.
Business or Warehouse
The Type field is the important one. A Business location is an office or operating site. A Warehouse location holds stock, and is what item requests and stock transfers draw from and deliver to. Setting the wrong type means a site will not appear where users expect to select it.
Location codes
Each location gets a code such as LOC-4515-0001, generated automatically and containing your organisation code.
Where locations are used
On user records, as the Branch.
On item requests, when choosing the source warehouse and delivery location.
On stock transfers, as the source and destination.
On request filters, for example filtering by office location.
Managing spend categories
Categories classify what money is spent on. They drive reporting, and appear on nearly every request form.
Where to find them
Administration → Categories. The page counts Total, Active and Inactive Categories, and has three tabs: All Categories, Category Mapping and Import History.
The three category types
Every category has a Type, and the type decides where it appears:
Expense — appears when classifying expenses, cash requests and reimbursements.
Product — appears on purchase and item request lines.
Vendor — classifies the supplier itself, for example Food Supplies.
Note: The same name can exist as more than one type. Operations and Overhead, for instance, exists as both a Product and an Expense category with different codes. When reconciling, match on the category code rather than the name.
What a category record holds
Name, Type, Description, a Category Code such as CAT-4515-0135, Status, Mappings and a Colour. The colour is what tints the category in charts and lists, so choose distinguishable colours for categories you compare often.
Adding categories
Add Category — create one at a time.
Import — load many at once. Past loads are listed under Import History.
Export — take the current list out.
Category Mapping
The Category Mapping tab links categories to your accounting structure. Unmapped categories are a common cause of journals reporting missing GL accounts, so complete mapping before going live.
Setting company policies
Company policies define the spending rules that requests are checked against, and record where those rules are broken.
Where to find them
Administration → Company Policies. The page counts Total Policies, Active Policies, Inactive Policies and Total Rules, and has two tabs: All Policies and Policy Violations.
How policies are structured
A policy is attached to a module, so the rules apply to one kind of request. Each policy has a Policy ID such as POL-4515-0001, a Title, the Module it governs, a Status and a created date. A policy can hold more than one rule, which is why Total Policies and Total Rules are counted separately.
Creating a policy
Select Create Policy.
Give it a clear title.
Choose the module it governs, for example Cash Request or Payment Request.
Define the rules.
Activate it.
Policy Violations
The Policy Violations tab lists where rules have been breached. Review it regularly — a policy nobody checks is a policy nobody follows.
Point users at the policy
Where staff routinely pick the wrong request type or exceed limits, the underlying policy is usually the answer to their question. Company Policies is visible to employees as well as administrators, so you can refer people to it directly.
Note: Spendive ships with starter policies for Cash Request, Payment Request and Reimbursement Request. Review these against your own rules rather than assuming the defaults match.
Configuring company settings
Company Settings holds your organisation's own details, and the configuration the rest of Spendive depends on.
Where to find them
Administration → Company Settings. Six tabs group the configuration.
Profile
Your organisation's own record: name, contact email and phone, business description, address, number of employees, business sector, country, state, city and postal code. It also shows your Company ID, for example SPE-IDE-4515, your RC Number and your Timezone. Use Edit Profile to change these.
Note: The Company ID appears in every reference number the system generates, so quote it when contacting support.
App Settings
Application-level preferences for the organisation.
Integrations
Connections to other systems, including the ERP that posted journals can be synced to.
Taxes
Tax rates applied to purchase request lines, bills and expense reports.
Bank Accounts
The organisation's accounts. One is used as the default company bank account — this is the account applied to an expense report when the person raising it does not choose one, so make sure the default is correct.
Developers
API and developer configuration.
Get the timezone right
Every record is stamped with a date and time. If the timezone is wrong, request timestamps and approval histories will not line up with your working day.
Note: Company Settings is visible to employees as well as administrators, though only administrators can change what it holds.
Managing designations
Designations are job titles. They describe seniority, where departments describe function.
Where to find them
Administration → Designations. The page counts Total, Active and Inactive Designations.
What a designation holds
A Name such as Chief Financial Officer, an Alias such as cfo, a Designation Code such as DES-4515-0002, a status and a created date. The alias is the short form used where space is tight.
Adding one
Select Add Designation, enter the name and alias, and save.
Designation, department, role
These three are easy to confuse and do different jobs:
Designation — the person's job title and seniority, for example Director.
Department — the function they work in, for example Finance & Accounting.
Role — what they can do in Spendive, for example Employee (Requester).
Changing someone's designation does not change what they can see. That is governed by their role under Administration → Roles And Permissions.
Note: Spendive ships with 30 designations covering the usual chief officer titles through to management grades. Adjust these to match your own structure.
Setting up approval workflows and delegations
Approval workflows decide who has to approve what. Delegations decide who acts when an approver is unavailable.
Where to find them
Administration → Approvals & Delegations. The page counts Total Workflows, Active Workflows, Inactive Workflows and Available Modules, and has two tabs: Approval Workflow and Approval Delegations.
How a workflow is defined
Each workflow attaches to a module and an event. A workflow named Expense Report, for example, is bound to the Expense Report module on the Created event — so it runs whenever an expense report is created.
Creating a workflow
Select Create Workflow.
Name it after what it governs.
Choose the module it applies to.
Choose the event that triggers it.
Define the approval steps.
Activate it.
Coverage is worth checking
Spendive reports how many modules are available alongside how many workflows exist. Where there are fewer workflows than modules, some record types have no approval routing configured at all. Compare the two figures during setup rather than discovering the gap through an unapproved request.
Workflows Spendive provides
Starter workflows exist for Expense Report, Budget, Goods Received Note, Vendor, Payment, Bill Payment, Purchase Order, RFQ, Reimbursement Request and Payment Request, each triggered on creation. Review these against your own authority limits.
Delegations
The Approval Delegations tab lets an approver's authority pass to someone else for a period — before leave rather than during it. Delegation is the usual fix for approvals that stall because one person is away.
Note: If requests are sitting unapproved, check three things in order: whether a workflow exists for that module, whether the approver's department has a head of department set, and whether a delegation is needed.
Reading the audit log
The audit log records who did what, and when. It is the first place to look when you need to establish what actually happened.
Where to find it
Administration → Audit Logs. Three figures summarise activity: All Entries, This Week Entries and Today Entries.
What each entry records
User — who performed the action.
Action — what they did, in plain language.
Event — the action type, for example Logout or Update.
Subject Type — what kind of record was affected: User, Role, Company and so on.
Entity ID — the specific record, for example ROL-4515-0007.
Location and device — where the action came from, such as Chrome, Mac.
Date & Time.
Using it to answer questions
Because entries name the record, the log answers questions such as when a role was last changed, who altered company settings, and when a user last signed in. Entries like 'Role updated: Employee (Requester)' with a timestamp are what let you tie a permissions complaint to an actual change.
Filtering
Use Filter to narrow the list. Entries are paginated, with the most recent first.
Note: Location and device are not always captured, and appear as Unknown where they are not. Do not treat an Unknown device as suspicious in itself.
When to check it
A permission changed and nobody remembers doing it.
A setting differs from what was agreed.
You need to evidence who approved something, and when.
Need help? If the page, field, or approval action is missing, confirm the active organisation and ask an administrator to check your role and permissions. Quote the record reference when contacting support.