Approval Authority Matrix Enforcer
Check every PO, invoice, payment, and journal entry against your delegation-of-authority matrix, then flag anything approved at the wrong level for its amount or type, so your controller can disposition the exceptions and export a clean compliance report.
A private, login-protected web tool that imports your transactions and your authority matrix, automatically flags under-authorized or missing approvals, routes each exception to a controller for disposition, and exports an auditor-ready compliance report plus an exceptions list — with a full audit trail.
Before you start
- A CSV (or export) of transactions with at least: transaction id, type, amount, and who approved it
- Your delegation-of-authority matrix: each role/person and their approval limit by transaction type
- Free accounts on Vercel, Supabase, and Resend (all have generous free tiers)
- No coding experience required — you'll paste the plan into an AI coding agent and answer its questions
The problem this kills
Your delegation-of-authority matrix says a $50,000 purchase order needs a VP sign-off and anything over $100,000 needs two approvers. But how do you actually know that every transaction last quarter got approved at the right level? Today the answer is usually a painful spot-check: someone pulls a sample, opens the matrix in one window and the ERP export in another, and eyeballs whether the approver had the authority for that amount and type. It's slow, it misses things, and it falls apart the moment someone was on an acting/delegated role or the limits are tiered.
Auditors and controllers need complete coverage, not a sample — and they need a defensible paper trail showing exactly which transactions were checked, which were flagged, and how each exception was dispositioned. Spreadsheets can't give you that.
What you'll build
A small, private web app that does the boring, error-prone matching for you and then puts a human in charge of the judgment calls:
- Import a transactions CSV (id, type, amount, approver, date) and your authority matrix (role/person → approval limit by type, including tiered and dual-approval thresholds).
- Check every transaction against the rule that should have applied for its amount and type — accounting for delegations and acting roles in effect on the transaction date.
- Flag the exceptions: under-authorized approvals, missing approvals, and dual-approval shortfalls.
- Disposition each flag through a controller's review — accept with a note, escalate, or remediate.
- Export an auditor-ready compliance report and a clean exceptions list.
This is detective review — it confirms approvals happened correctly after the fact. It is not the approval workflow itself, so it never touches or slows down your real purchasing or AP systems.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
The plan is a complete, paste-and-go runbook for an AI coding agent. The very first thing it does is interview you about your business — your transaction types, the exact column names in your ERP export, how your authority limits are tiered, where dual approval kicks in, and how you record acting or delegated approvers. It reflects a short tailored spec back to you and waits for your thumbs-up before it builds anything, so the tool fits your real matrix and data — not a generic template.
From there it walks you, step by step, through:
- Standing up the Next.js app, Supabase database, and login.
- Designing the data model around your transaction types and your matrix structure.
- Building the import screens for transactions and the authority matrix (with duplicate guards on transaction id).
- Writing the rule engine that resolves the correct required approval level for each transaction.
- The controller's exception queue and disposition gate.
- The compliance report and exceptions CSV export.
Every build step ends with a ready-to-copy prompt you paste into your agent.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
This isn't a throwaway script — it's an audit control, so it's built like one:
- Login so only your finance and audit team can open it.
- Row-level security so each organization only ever sees its own transactions and matrix.
- A complete audit trail — who imported what, who dispositioned which exception, and when.
- A human-in-the-loop gate: the tool flags and drafts, but nothing is finalized in the compliance report until a controller reviews and approves the disposition.
- Duplicate guards so the same transaction id can't be loaded or counted twice.
Who it's for
Controllers, internal auditors, and finance-ops leads who own approval compliance and are tired of sampling. If you can describe your authority matrix and pull a CSV of transactions, you can build this — no developer required.
You've got this. Open the Implementation Plan, paste the first prompt, and let the agent interview you.