Advances vs. Expenses
A Payment Request is how you ask for money in Flow Ledger. Every request is one of two types, chosen when you create it:
- Advance — "request funds before spending". Use this when you need cash up front. A disbursed Advance must later be accounted for with a Retirement Request — see that chapter.
- Expense — "reimburse money already spent". Use this when you've already paid for something out of pocket and want it repaid. Expenses don't need to be retired — the money was already spent.
Disbursement isn't a separate record. There's no standalone "Disbursement" entity to manage — disbursing is simply the payout step on an approved Payment Request. Its full history lives on the request's own Timeline.
Creating a request
Go to Payment Requests and click New Request. Fill in the Request Details card:
- Request Type — Advance or Expense.
- Currency — the currency this request is in.
- Notes — optional context for approvers.
- Line Items — click Add Item for each thing being funded or reimbursed. Every item needs a Description and Amount. For an Expense item you must also pick a Cost Code and may add a Receipt Number; for an Advance item the cost code is optional (Flow Ledger falls back to a default advance cost code if you leave it blank).
The running Total updates as you add items. Click Save as Draft to keep working on it later, without sending it for approval yet.
Submitting for approval
From a draft request, click Submit for Approval. Flow Ledger looks up the approval workflow configured for this request type and your branch (or the organization-wide default) and starts routing your request through its stages.
If your organization requires receipts for Expenses, you'll need to attach at least one Source Document before you can submit — you'll see "Source documents are required. Please upload at least one before submitting." if you try to skip this.
If nobody has configured an approval workflow for this request type yet, submission is blocked with a message asking you to contact an administrator — see Configuring workflow templates.
Once submitted, the request moves to In Workflow and you can watch its progress in the Approval Progress stepper and Timeline on the request's page.
Editing and resubmitting
You can only edit a request while it's a Draft or has been Sent Back to you for revision — and only you, as the owner, can edit it. Update the details and either save the draft again or click Resubmit for Approval.
A resubmitted request re-enters the workflow at the exact stage that sent it back — it doesn't start over from the beginning.
Disbursing an approved request
Once a request clears every approval stage, its status becomes Approved and it appears in Disbursements — a queue of every approved request still awaiting payout, oldest first. This screen doesn't hold separate records of its own; it's simply a filtered view of Payment Requests.
Anyone with permission to disburse requests can open the approved request and click Mark as Disbursed (or Disburse from the queue row), choosing a Payment Method — Cash, Bank Transfer, Mobile Money, or Cheque — and an optional Reference (transaction ref or cheque number).
Disbursing records a payout entry against the branch's Cashbook and moves the request to Disbursed. If the cashbook doesn't have enough balance to cover it, you'll see "Insufficient cashbook balance to process this disbursement." and nothing is recorded — top up the cashbook with a manual receipt first.
Disbursed Advances then wait to be accounted for — see Retirement Requests. Disbursed Expenses need no further action.
Cancelling and declining
As the owner, you can click Cancel Request at any point before it's disbursed (Draft, In Workflow, Approved, or Sent Back) — this is permanent and can't be undone.
An approver can instead Reject a request from their Approvals inbox, which cancels the entire remaining workflow and marks the request Denied — this is also terminal, with no way to bring it back. If an approver instead clicks Send Back, the request returns to you to fix and resubmit — see Send Back vs. Reject for the difference.
Next, see how disbursed advances get accounted for in Retirement Requests.
