Spend is the approval with the sharpest consequences and the one most often built backwards — because the rule is arithmetic, and almost everybody enforces it by asking the person spending the money to choose who signs it off.
The rule everybody has
And almost nobody enforces it.
Every company has a version of this sentence, usually written down somewhere nobody opens. In practice the person raising a purchase request picks the approver, and they pick whoever answers quickest — which is exactly the person the threshold existed to route around.
That is not dishonesty. It is a Tuesday afternoon and a supplier waiting. But it means the control exists on paper and not in the process, and it is discovered the first time somebody asks who approved a large invoice.
The fix is to take the choice away from the person raising it, and have the amount decide.
The native build
Which works, and grows the way you would expect.
Add a Numbers column for the amount, then one conditional automation per threshold:
Two bands is four automations once you count the notification back. Four bands is eight, and adding a fifth means editing all of them, because the condition greater than 10,000 has to become between 10,000 and 25,000 everywhere at once. That is the real cost, and it arrives about six months in.
Currency is worth a thought. A Numbers column holds a number; if you buy in more than one currency, either normalise before the column or accept that the threshold means different things on different rows.
The part nobody builds
And on a busy board, nobody notices.
A status column is a cell. The person who raised the request can move it to Approved themselves, and the activity log will faithfully record that they did. If separation of duties matters in your company, it cannot live in the column — it has to live in whatever is doing the approving.
This is not a reason to distrust anybody. It is a reason not to describe your board as a control when it is a record.
What gets asked later
This is the question, and a status column cannot answer it.
A purchase is queried months later — the invoice does not match the quote, or the quantity changed, or a supplier delivered something different. The question is never “was this approved”. It is what was in front of the person who approved it.
The activity log says the status changed to Approved at 14:32 on the ninth. It does not say the quote attached at 14:32 was the £8,400 one, or that the £11,200 revision replaced it on the eleventh — which, if it did, means the approval on record was given for a number that is no longer anywhere on the item.
Keep the version, not just the file. Put a revision in the filename, never overwrite, and require a comment on anything that is not a plain yes. That much costs nothing and is worth doing whatever software you use.
Questions
Natively, with a conditional automation per threshold: when a number column is greater than a value and status changes to a label, notify a person. One automation per band. It works, and the thing to watch is that adding a fourth band means editing every automation rather than one rule.
A status column cannot stop them. Nothing in monday prevents the person who raised a request from moving it to Approved themselves, and on a busy board nobody notices. If separation matters to you, the check has to live in whatever is doing the approving rather than in the column.
It shows that a named person moved a column to Approved at a time. It does not show what they were looking at when they did, which is the question actually asked when a purchase is queried — the quote attached today may not be the quote that was attached then.
What we built
And the record says what they were shown.
Signoff reads the item’s own values, so a board rule can say anything over 10,000 goes to the director once, in one place, rather than as eight automations that have to be edited together. The person raising the request does not choose, and cannot skip a stage.
The quote is previewed inside the request rather than linked, so the approver sees the number they are agreeing to. Every decision records which version of each document was on screen — and when a file is replaced after somebody approved it, the approval reopens instead of quietly covering a figure nobody agreed to.
It is a record of who agreed to what, not a spend control. It will not stop a purchase and it does not touch your accounting system.
Keep reading
The date column people forget, why a reminder on a schedule becomes furniture within a fortnight, and what to chase instead of what is overdue.
What to do in the next twenty minutes when a file was replaced after sign-off, how to work out what each approver actually saw, and the habits that stop it recurring.
What a dashboard widget genuinely solves, why a cross-board view quietly stops matching some boards, and the half of the problem a list of items cannot cover.
Three approvals a month, free, with the record included. Enough to see whether it answers the question you get asked six months later.