Perk notifies approvers when new expenses are waiting for their review. You can receive these notifications by email, and—if your admin has set up the integration—by Slack or Microsoft Teams. 

Email notifications are available on all Perk plans. Slack and Microsoft Teams notifications are only available for Premium and Pro accounts.

Use this article to understand what each notification contains and how to approve or reject expenses from it.

Note: These notifications are separate from the open spend tasks email, which groups all your open tasks in a single digest. You may receive both if your admin has turned on the open spend tasks email—they're configured independently and one doesn't affect the other.

What expense notifications contain

Email

Perk sends a daily email whenever new expenses have been submitted to you for approval. You'll only receive it on days when something is waiting—if nothing is pending, no email is sent.

The email shows a summary of the expenses that need your attention, including the expense description, submitter name, payment method, and amount. If more than a few expenses are waiting, the email previews the first few and notes how many others are included.

Slack (Premium and Pro accounts)

If your admin has set up the Slack integration, Perk checks hourly for new expenses and sends you a Slack message whenever there are expenses waiting. The message shows the expense description, submitter name, and amount, with a Go to approvals button that takes you directly to your approvals queue in Perk.

Microsoft Teams (Premium and Pro accounts)

If your admin has set up the Microsoft Teams integration, Perk checks hourly for new expenses and sends you a Teams notification whenever there are expenses waiting. The notification shows the expense details and a Go to approvals button that takes you directly to your approvals queue in Perk.

Reviewing and approving an expense

All three notification types—email, Slack, and Teams—link you to Perk to review and act on expenses. Expenses can't be approved or rejected directly from the notification.

1. Open the notification and click Go to approvals.
2. In Perk, review the expense details—including the description, amount, date, category, and any attached receipt.
3. Click Approve if the expense is valid.

Once approved, the expense moves forward in the reimbursement workflow. The person who submitted the expense is notified that their expense has been approved.

Sending back an expense

1. Open the notification and click Go to approvals.
2. In Perk, review the expense details and identify the reason for rejection.
3. Click Reject.
4. Optionally, add a comment explaining why you're sending back the expense.
5. Confirm your decision.

Once rejected, the expense is returned to the submitter with your feedback so they can correct and resubmit it, provided you haven't chosen to reject the expense permanently.

Reviewing multiple expenses

Each notification summarizes the new expenses submitted to you since the previous check. You can click through from the notification to review them in Perk.

Tip: To review all pending expenses in one place, go to Spend > My Tasks > Approvals or Spend > Approvals > Approvals list in Perk. The Approvals list gives you a dedicated view where you can filter, sort, and bulk-approve expenses without clicking through from each notification.