Commitments and approvals
What this is for
Between “we promised this” and “a bill arrived”, money used to be
invisible. Send a 40-room block to a hotel and you’ve committed
twenty-five thousand dollars — but until the hotel’s invoice shows up,
nothing on any screen said so, and nobody had to sign off on the click
that promised it.
Two tools close that gap:
- The Commitments register shows every promise no bill has caught
up with yet. - The optional approval gate puts a second pair of eyes on the
biggest of those promises — marking a rooming list as sent.
Commitments is a tab on the Finance page, so it follows the
same rules as the rest of the money area: the Finance module has to be
in your plan, and you personally need Can view financials (or be
an admin). The approval settings live on the Company page and only
admins can change them — nobody gets to raise their own ceiling.
The Commitments register
Open Finance and click the Commitments tab — it sits right
after Overview. One row per obligation, and three tiles across the
top: Open commitments (the total, and how many items across how
many events), Hotel blocks on their own, and No bill link
possible for the lines you’ll have to reconcile by hand.
You don’t enter anything here. The register reads the records your
team already keeps and works out what’s been promised:
| Kind | What counts | The figure |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel block | A rooming list you’ve sent, or the hotel has confirmed. A draft block doesn’t count — nothing has been promised yet. | Rate × rooms × nights. Nights come from the block’s check-in and check-out dates; if those are blank, the event’s own dates fill in. |
| Rental car | A booked reservation. | The reservation total. |
| Freight and Ground transport | A recorded cost that no posted bill covers yet. | The recorded cost. |
| Venue contract | The venue cost typed on the event. The contract is signed, so the money is promised. | The contract amount. |
Flights are left out on purpose. Airfare is almost always paid by card
at booking, so by the time the flight is in Herding Cats the money has
already left — it’s a cost the P&L counts, not a bill you’re waiting
for.
How a line leaves the register
A commitment disappears the moment the books catch up with it:
- Its bill posts. Link the block, car, or freight leg to a bill in
Payables and approve the bill — the line drops off, because the
ledger now carries those dollars. A draft bill doesn’t count; the
Bill column tells you the state of any linked bill. - You type the actual cost. Entering the invoiced figure on a
hotel block (on the rooming board, under Reconcile) retires it the
same way — it has stopped being a promise and become a cost.
Venue contracts are the exception: nothing can retire them
automatically, because the venue cost on an event has no way to link
to a bill. They’re flagged Can’t be linked, and the third tile
totals them so you know how much needs a human to reconcile it.
The register and the ledger can never both count the same dollars —
that’s the whole design. An empty register means the books have caught
up with the promises.
The same numbers on each event
Every event’s Financials tab shows a compact Open commitments
card with that event’s share. It’s deliberately kept out of the
event’s net: a promise isn’t a cost line yet, and the P&L only counts
real ones.
The approval gate
The gate is off by default. Nothing changes for anyone until an
admin switches it on.
Go to Company, then find the Finance approvals section
Switch on Commitment approvals
The toast confirms it: Big rooming-list sends now need approval.Set the Rooming-list approval threshold
A rooming list worth this much or more (rate × rooms × nights)
needs an admin’s sign-off before it counts as sent. Type dollars in
the box; it saves when you click away or press Enter.
What your coordinator sees
When someone marks a rooming list as sent and the block is at or above
the threshold, the send doesn’t happen. Instead the dialog shows a
plain notice: Sent for approval — the list goes to the hotel once
an admin signs off. Nothing has been marked sent, and the hotel hasn’t
been told anything. Reopening the dialog shows the same notice instead
of the send button, so nobody can file the same request twice.
Approving or declining
Open the Approvals page
The card is titled Spending waiting on approval, and it says
what’s at stake: nothing here has been marked sent, and no hotel
has been told anything.Read the request
Each one names the hotel, the event, and the committed figure.Approve or decline
Approving records the send — the block flips to Sent on the
rooming board and the commitment lands on the register. Declining
leaves the block a draft, exactly as if the send had never been
attempted.
Either way, the person who asked gets a Commitment approval
decided notification, so nobody is left refreshing the rooming board
wondering what happened.
The gate takes effect immediately. A coordinator mid-way through
sending rooming lists will suddenly see their sends pause for
approval — which is the point, but it’s kinder if it isn’t a surprise.
The other two thresholds
The Finance approvals section also holds two money thresholds that are
always on — they have no switch:
| Threshold | What it does |
|---|---|
| Bill approval threshold | A vendor bill this large or larger can only be approved by an admin. Below it, coordinators can approve bills themselves. |
| Capitalization threshold | Equipment costing this much or more is treated as a capitalized asset rather than an expense when you record what an inventory item cost — the line your accountant calls de minimis. |
All three thresholds work the same way: dollars in the box, saved on
blur or Enter, with a one-sentence toast confirming the new rule.
Honest limits
- There are no purchase orders yet. The register is derived entirely
from the records your team already keeps — blocks, cars, freight,
venue contracts — so a promise made outside those (a signed awards
order, say) won’t appear until its bill does. - Only rooming-list sends are gated. Booking a rental car or recording
freight isn’t held for approval; bills have their own always-on
admin threshold.
Where to go next
- Hotels and rooming — the blocks
and sends the gate watches - Bills and vendors — posting the bill that
retires a commitment - Money — how the whole finance area fits together