Approvers can preview the impact that a request will have on the budget before approving it. However, the budget is only impacted once the request has been approved.

How Requests Impact Your Budget

Before you start

Plan: Budgets are available on Foundations, Scale, and Premium plans.
Roles and permissions: Account Owners, Admins, and Controllers can view and edit all budgets. Budget Owners can view and edit only the budgets they own.
Setup required: You need at least one budget configured in Spendesk before requests can show a budget impact. See Budget set up.

Understand committed vs. used budget

Spendesk tracks different types of spend against a budget:

Committed amount: Spend generated by an approved request that has not yet been paid or validated as used. For example, an approved expense report that has not yet been reimbursed.
Used amount: Spend that has either been paid or validated by Finance, depending on the payment type. For example, a completed card payment or an expense report validated in the review workflow.
Available amount: The remaining amount in the budget that has not been committed or used.

When a request is submitted, eligible approvers can see its expected impact before approving it. Once the request is approved, the amount is recorded as committed.

💡 Tip: The expected request amount may temporarily include tax because VAT has not yet been confirmed. Once the VAT amount is identified, Spendesk updates the budget amount to reflect the amount without tax.

View budget details

Go to the Budgets page.
Select the budget you want to check.
Review the committed, used, and available amounts displayed for that budget.

When is a request committed or used?

The table below shows when each type of spend moves from committed to used.

Spend type	Committed when	Used when	Date counted
Single-purchase virtual card	The request is approved by an approver	The payment is made	Card payment authorisation date
Recurring virtual card	The request is approved by an approver. This applies to the current and future months	Each payment is made	Card payment authorisation date
Physical card	Not applicable, as there is no pre-approval commitment step	The payment is made	Card payment authorisation date
Invoice without a purchase order	The invoice is approved by an approver	The invoice is validated by Finance in Invoices > Review	Invoice allocation period
Invoice with a purchase order	The purchase order is approved by an approver	The invoice is validated by Finance in Invoices > Review	Spread proportionally across the purchase order start and end dates
Expense report or expense claim	The request is approved by an approver	The expense report is validated by Finance in Expense claims > Review	Payment date
Mileage or per diem allowance	The request is approved by an approver	The request is validated by Finance	Payment date
Credit note	Not applicable, as there is no commitment step	Recorded when the credit note is settled and reduces the used amount	Settlement date

For recurring cards, the committed amount can be adjusted from the subscription details page if you want the budget to reflect only the amount actually paid.

What happens if you exceed your budget?

If used spend exceeds the planned budget, Spendesk displays a warning on the budget overview and request for the Approver.

Select the warning to view the payments linked to that budget.
Review the payments grouped by expense type.
Check the payment details to understand what caused the budget to be exceeded.

The budget overview provides visibility on spending, but exceeding a budget does not automatically block a payment.

Changing the cost center updates the budget calculation, but it does not reverse a payment that has already been made.

Budget visibility for approvers

Approvers with access to the relevant budget [ owners or co-owners] can see the impact of a request from the Requests tab before approving or rejecting it.

The budget information helps approvers understand how approving a request could affect the available budget.

Troubleshooting

A submitted request does not show a budget impact

Cause: request does not contain the information required to calculate the impact.

Resolution:

Check that a budget has been configured.
Check that the request contains the required spending information.
Refresh the request or budget page.
If the impact is still missing, contact an Admin or Account Owner.

The used amount is higher than expected

Cause: A payment may have been completed, or an invoice or expense report may have been validated by Finance and therefore counted as used.