Nominating an Expense Approver for an Event

When the same leader is running a camp, paying for fuel, picking up the campsite invoice, and chasing receipts from helpers, the last thing they need is for every claim to wait on a treasurer who wasn't there. You can now nominate a specific person to approve any expense linked to a particular event. Claims for that camp route to them; everything else still goes to the group's default approver.

Each item on a claim is routed on its own. A claim with five items might have three going to the camp leader (because they're tagged to that camp) and two going to the group default approver. The claimant submits once, and Scoutworks sends the right summary to the right person.

Where to find this#

The nominated approver lives on the event itself, in the Finance card. You'll see it on:

• Create Camp and Edit Camp
• Create Activity/Trip and Edit Activity/Trip
• Create Programme Meeting and Edit Programme Meeting

The field is labelled Nominated expense approver (optional), sitting alongside Cost per person and Budget. Leave it blank and the event uses your group's default approver — no different from how things worked before.

Who can set the field#

• Group admins — on any event.
• The leader in charge — on events they're leading.
• Leaders with access to the event's section — on events for their section.

The picker shows the active leaders and admins in your group.

How claims get routed#

The routing follows the line, not the whole claim. When a claim is submitted, each item is checked in turn:

A single claim can therefore have items pending several different people at once. Each approver only sees the items routed to them — the rest stay quiet on their list until someone else handles them.

When the nominated approver submits their own claim#

If the camp leader is the nominated approver and they're claiming back £40 of fuel for that same camp, the line is approved automatically the moment they submit it. There's no inbox ping-pong, no waiting on themselves.

This only applies to the event they've been nominated for. If they submit a separate item for a different event — or one not linked to any event — that line still goes through the normal approval route.

The treasurer always settles the payment, even on auto-approved lines, so the money still moves through a second pair of hands.

Prefilling from the leader in charge#

To save typing on the common case, when you create a fresh event and pick a Leader in charge, the Nominated expense approver is filled in with the same person. Change either field and the other stays put — there's no automatic sync after the first save. So if you swap the leader in charge two weeks later, the approver doesn't follow them unless you update it yourself.

What approvers see#

A nominated approver doesn't get a different page — they share the same Claims & Payments view that treasurers use, but their To approve view is naturally smaller. It only includes claims that have at least one item routed to them.

Bulk approve from this view is also routed-aware. If an approver selects five items and only three of them are theirs, they see a confirmation toast like:

The two skipped items stay where they are and the original approver still sees them in their own queue.

What the treasurer sees#

Treasurers continue to see every claim and every item across the whole group, including ones already approved by an event approver. Settlement (the actual payment, whether reimbursing a leader or paying a supplier) is still a treasurer job — nominating an event approver only changes who signs off the claim itself.

Removing or changing a nominee#

Open the event, edit the Finance card, and either pick a different person from Choose approver or click Clear. Items that haven't been approved yet re-route on the next action. Items that have been approved already are unaffected.

If the nominee leaves the group or is archived, Scoutworks treats their slot as empty and falls back to your group's default approver until you set a new one.

What's next#

• Reviewing and Paying Expense Claims — the approver and treasurer view of the Claims & Payments page, with the line-by-line workflow and bulk actions.
• Submitting and Approving Expense Claims — how leaders submit a claim and tag items to events, sections, budgets, or restricted funds.
• Creating Events — where the Finance card lives on each event type, and what the other fields in it do.