How to set up purchase approvals as a UAE business grows from 5 to 50 people

Spending has three moments where someone should say yes: committing to buy (a purchase order or quote acceptance), accepting the bill (the goods or service arrived as ordered), and releasing payment. Small businesses often approve only the payment, which is the latest and weakest point; by then the money is owed.

You do not need all three for everything. Use purchase orders for stock, projects and anything over a set amount; let routine bills like utilities and subscriptions go straight to bill approval.

A tiered table everyone can read is better than a long policy nobody reads.

• Up to AED 2,000: department head approves the bill.
• AED 2,000 to AED 20,000: department head and finance manager.
• Above AED 20,000: owner or managing director as well.
• Any new supplier, regardless of amount: finance checks the TRN, licence and bank details first.
• Capital items above your capitalisation threshold: owner approval and a fixed asset tag.

The classic rule is that the person who requests a purchase should not approve it, and the person who approves should not release payment. In a 12-person company you cannot have a separate person for every step. Prioritise one rule: nobody can both change a supplier’s bank details and approve a payment to that supplier.

Bank detail fraud, where a fake email asks you to pay a known supplier at a new account, is a well-known risk for businesses of every size. A phone call to a known number before changing bank details stops most of it.

A fit-out contractor grows from 8 to 35 staff across four sites. Before rules, site supervisors buy materials on account at three hardware suppliers and the bills arrive in a bundle at month end. In one month, the owner finds AED 46,000 of materials billed against a site that had finished.

After rules: purchase orders above AED 2,000 per site, bills matched to orders on arrival, the project manager approving bills up to AED 20,000, the owner above that. The next month, a AED 7,800 bill arrives for a closed site; it has no matching order and stops at approval. The supplier admits a coding error and reissues it to the right site.

Staff expense claims are purchases too. Set the same principle: a manager approves, finance checks receipts and VAT, and payment follows. Require a receipt for every claim and a tax invoice where the business wants to recover VAT. A rule that claims must be submitted within 30 days keeps months from mixing.

Limits that made sense at AED 3 million revenue are a bottleneck at AED 20 million. Each year, look at how many bills sat waiting for approval and for how long, and raise limits or add approvers where the queue is long. Also check which approvers left the company; nobody should be approving from an email account that belongs to a former employee.

HelloBooks bills and approvals let you set rules by amount, supplier, category or project. The AI agent captures the bill, matches it to a purchase order where one exists, and routes it to the right approver; anything without a match or with changed bank details is flagged. Expense claims post to the ledger once approved. On the Business plan, advanced role-based access and the audit log show who approved what and when.

Approval rules can be customised for your structure; book a call at /book-a-demo or email hello@hellobooks.ai to have them set up.