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Employee profile design

Recommendation​

Start with two or three profiles covering your main employee segments - for example, Standard, Management, and Contractor. Add more only when a group of employees genuinely has different visible categories, spending limits, or approval routing that cannot be handled within an existing profile.

Why​

Each profile must be maintained separately. When you add a new expense category or change an approval policy, every profile needs to be updated. Over-segmenting creates a maintenance burden disproportionate to the policy differences it solves.

Under-segmenting is also a problem: if all employees share one profile, field staff see office supply categories they'll never use, and executives are capped at the same spending limits as junior employees. The right number of profiles reflects genuine policy differences, not org chart structure.

How to apply​

Segment by spending policy, not job title. The useful divisions are usually: employees with standard limits and no elevated categories; employees with higher limits or access to categories like entertainment or executive travel; and contractors or temporary workers who need a minimal, restricted set of categories.

Focus on the two highest-impact settings first: visible categories and approval policies. Get those right before tuning spending caps. Showing the wrong categories or routing to the wrong approver causes immediate friction; a cap that's slightly off causes a support ticket.

Set the Default Employee Profile in Basic Setup. New employees get this profile automatically. It should be your safest, most restrictive profile - missing categories can be added, but submitting an expense to the wrong category before it's noticed creates cleanup work.

Use Approve Immediately Upon Submission sparingly. This setting bypasses the approval queue entirely for the selected transaction types. It is appropriate for profiles where no manual review is needed - for example, a senior finance employee whose mileage claims are low-risk. Do not enable it as a convenience shortcut for high-volume submitters.

Different approval policies per category within the same profile is the correct way to apply elevated scrutiny to specific expense types. A management profile might auto-approve meals under £30 while always requiring CFO sign-off on entertainment, all within the same profile.

Common mistakes​

One profile per employee defeats the purpose of profiles. If every employee has a unique profile, you have no grouping benefit and maintenance overhead multiplies with headcount. If genuinely individual configuration is needed, use the fields on the Employee Card directly.

Not setting a Default Employee Profile in Basic Setup means newly onboarded employees have no profile until someone manually assigns one. During onboarding periods this creates a window where employees can see all categories and route via default approval with no policy applied.

Hiding categories without consulting employees generates support requests. Before hiding a category, confirm that no one in the profile group legitimately needs it. A brief check with a department lead avoids the common "I can't find the category I always use" complaint after launch.

Setting reimbursement caps without communicating them creates surprise partial reimbursements. Employees see an approved expense but receive less than they submitted and have no idea why. Document and communicate any caps before go-live.

When to deviate​

Very small organisations (typically under 20–25 employees) with a uniform expense policy can get by with a single shared profile. The maintenance overhead argument doesn't apply when there's only one profile to update, and a single profile makes auditing straightforward. If the organisation grows or policies diverge by department, split into two profiles at that point.