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Payroll & Timekeeping / Expense Reimbursement

Receipt Policy Checker

Build an internal tool that checks every line of a submitted expense report against your written spend policy and hands reviewers a clear, cited flag list to disposition before approval.

BeginnerAn afternoonBuilds onNext.js (App Router) on VercelSupabase (Postgres, Storage, Auth + RLS)Resend (email notifications)
What you'll build

Import an expense report, evaluate every line against your real policy, and get a flag list with the exact rule cited - so reviewers disposition each exception and return a cleaned report plus an exceptions log before approval.

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Before you start

  • A free Supabase account
  • A free Vercel account
  • A free Resend account
  • A sample expense report (CSV or Google Sheet) and your written spend policy

The problem this kills

Expense review is death by judgment calls. One reviewer waves through a $14 airport beer, another rejects it. Someone misses that three "client dinners" all landed on the same Saturday. A $400 charge slips by with no receipt because nobody remembered the threshold was $75. By the time finance notices the pattern, the report is already approved and the money is out the door.

The policy exists - it's written down somewhere - but enforcing it line by line, the same way every time, is tedious work that humans do inconsistently when they're busy. So policy becomes a vibe instead of a rule, and reimbursements drift.

What you'll build

A small web app where a reviewer imports an expense report and instantly sees every line checked against your actual policy: over per-item or daily limits, missing receipt above your threshold, disallowed categories (alcohol, first-class airfare, whatever you forbid), out-of-window dates, weekend or personal-looking spend. Each flag names the exact rule that fired, in plain language, so nobody has to argue from memory.

Crucially, the tool advises - it never auto-denies. The reviewer dispositions each flag (allow with a note, reject, or request more info), and the app returns a cleaned report plus an exceptions log to the submitter and approver. Consistent enforcement, with a human still making every call.

What's inside the Implementation Plan

The plan opens by interviewing you about your business - your actual spend policy, the limits and thresholds, the categories you disallow, the date windows you enforce, and the messy exceptions you live with - so the tool encodes your rules, not a generic template. It reads a short tailored spec back to you and waits for your thumbs-up before building anything.

From there it walks you, prompt by prompt, through:

  • Importing an expense report from CSV or a Google Sheet (no integration required to start).
  • A rule engine that evaluates each line and cites which policy rule fired and why.
  • A reviewer screen to disposition every flag - allow with note, reject, or request info.
  • Login, per-organization data isolation, a full audit trail, and a duplicate guard.
  • A cleaned-report and exceptions-log export in the exact columns your system expects.

Every build step ends with a ready-to-copy prompt you paste into your AI agent.

The governance it includes (this is the point)

This isn't a toy. The plan builds in the controls finance actually needs:

  • Login so only your team can use the tool.
  • Row-level security so reviewers only ever see their own organization's reports.
  • A complete audit trail - who dispositioned which flag, what they decided, and when.
  • A human-in-the-loop gate - the AI flags and cites; a person decides every exception; nothing is auto-denied and nothing commits without review.
  • Duplicate guards so the same report-and-line can't be processed twice.

Who it's for

Finance reviewers and approving managers who are tired of case-by-case judgment calls and want consistent, explainable policy enforcement - where the tool catches the violations and the human still owns the decision.

You've got this - paste the first prompt and let the interview tailor it to your policy.

Gated download

Enter your email — the plan downloads instantly and a copy lands in your inbox.

By submitting your email you'll also receive the weekly runbookify newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time.