Managing approvals for financial actions like issuing cards, changing limits, or reviewing reimbursements can be complex. Each organization has unique rules, approvers, and hierarchies, which makes scaling difficult. To address this, we introduced Approval Policies: a unified system that centralizes approval logic and provides a consistent experience across workflows. Phase 1 focused on Card Requests: the most common and sensitive approval flow.
YEAR
2025
ROLE
Product Designer
SERVICES
User Research
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Visual/UI Design
Design System Contribution
Delivery & Handoff
About the project
The challenge
Previously, permissions were fragmented: admins, team managers, and owners had overlapping abilities to issue cards, often without clear approval steps. This created risks:
- Lack of consistency across organizations
- No centralized way to define who must approve what
- Limited transparency for finance teams
- Edge cases that required manual workarounds
We needed to build a scalable framework where companies could customize their approval flows, while ensuring compliance and auditability.
Objectives
- Enable organizations to define approval rules with granular conditions (e.g., by team, role, or project).
- Replace scattered individual permissions with unified policies.
- Ensure every approval is logged, traceable, and auditable.
- Create a flexible system that can expand to future use cases like invoice payments or transaction reviews.
Phase 1: Rule builder
We introduced a new Approval Policies tab in the Organization Settings, giving admins and owners full control over how card requests are managed. I designed a rule builder that allows organizations to create flexible policies with conditions, layered approvals, and multi-step flows, making the system both powerful and intuitive. To ensure governance, we added a draft and publish flow, where rules can be collaboratively edited but only finalized by an owner. Every organization also benefits from a backup policy, acting as a safety net when no specific rule applies, so approvals never fall through the cracks. Beyond flexibility, I focused on creating a unified request flow, ensuring all card requests follow the same logic no matter where they are initiated. Finally, we emphasized transparency: approval steps are clearly surfaced in the UI, and every change is logged, giving finance teams confidence and traceability in their approval processes.
Card Requests’ page
Alongside the rule builder, I also designed a new dedicated “Card Requests” page within the Cards menu. This space allows users to clearly see all requests awaiting their approval or rejection. The decision to separate this from the main Cards page was intentional: by isolating the action of approving and rejecting from the broader card management view, we reduced noise and made it significantly easier for users to track their pending tasks. This design choice not only streamlined the workflow for approvers but also ensured that important actions wouldn’t get lost in the day-to-day navigation of the platform.
Impact
Consistency:All card requests follow one transparent approval process.
Efficiency:Finance teams can define rules once, reducing manual oversight.
Control:Organizations enforce compliance (e.g., requiring two approvers for large limits).
Scalability:This phase laid the groundwork for extending approval flows to reimbursements and transactions.
Outcome
Phase 1 launched with staged rollout across organizations. Early adoption showed strong engagement, with admins quickly moving from individual permissions to policy-based governance.
This first step established Approval Policies as the backbone for all future approval logic in Pliant.
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(Pliant) Approval Policies
OVERVIEW
Managing approvals for financial actions like issuing cards, changing limits, or reviewing reimbursements can be complex. Each organization has unique rules, approvers, and hierarchies, which makes scaling difficult. To address this, we introduced Approval Policies: a unified system that centralizes approval logic and provides a consistent experience across workflows. Phase 1 focused on Card Requests: the most common and sensitive approval flow.
YEAR
2025
ROLE
Product Designer
SERVICES
User Research
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Visual/UI Design
Design System Contribution
Delivery & Handoff
About the project
The challenge
Previously, permissions were fragmented: admins, team managers, and owners had overlapping abilities to issue cards, often without clear approval steps. This created risks:
- Lack of consistency across organizations
- No centralized way to define who must approve what
- Limited transparency for finance teams
- Edge cases that required manual workarounds
We needed to build a scalable framework where companies could customize their approval flows, while ensuring compliance and auditability.
Objectives
- Enable organizations to define approval rules with granular conditions (e.g., by team, role, or project).
- Replace scattered individual permissions with unified policies.
- Ensure every approval is logged, traceable, and auditable.
- Create a flexible system that can expand to future use cases like invoice payments or transaction reviews.
Phase 1: Rule builder
We introduced a new Approval Policies tab in the Organization Settings, giving admins and owners full control over how card requests are managed. I designed a rule builder that allows organizations to create flexible policies with conditions, layered approvals, and multi-step flows, making the system both powerful and intuitive. To ensure governance, we added a draft and publish flow, where rules can be collaboratively edited but only finalized by an owner. Every organization also benefits from a backup policy, acting as a safety net when no specific rule applies, so approvals never fall through the cracks. Beyond flexibility, I focused on creating a unified request flow, ensuring all card requests follow the same logic no matter where they are initiated. Finally, we emphasized transparency: approval steps are clearly surfaced in the UI, and every change is logged, giving finance teams confidence and traceability in their approval processes.
Card Requests’ page
Alongside the rule builder, I also designed a new dedicated “Card Requests” page within the Cards menu. This space allows users to clearly see all requests awaiting their approval or rejection. The decision to separate this from the main Cards page was intentional: by isolating the action of approving and rejecting from the broader card management view, we reduced noise and made it significantly easier for users to track their pending tasks. This design choice not only streamlined the workflow for approvers but also ensured that important actions wouldn’t get lost in the day-to-day navigation of the platform.
Impact
Consistency:All card requests follow one transparent approval process.
Efficiency:Finance teams can define rules once, reducing manual oversight.
Control:Organizations enforce compliance (e.g., requiring two approvers for large limits).
Scalability:This phase laid the groundwork for extending approval flows to reimbursements and transactions.
Outcome
Phase 1 launched with staged rollout across organizations. Early adoption showed strong engagement, with admins quickly moving from individual permissions to policy-based governance.
This first step established Approval Policies as the backbone for all future approval logic in Pliant.
Smooth Scroll
This will hide itself!
This will hide itself!
Enter Password
(Pliant) Approval Policies
OVERVIEW
Managing approvals for financial actions like issuing cards, changing limits, or reviewing reimbursements can be complex. Each organization has unique rules, approvers, and hierarchies, which makes scaling difficult. To address this, we introduced Approval Policies: a unified system that centralizes approval logic and provides a consistent experience across workflows. Phase 1 focused on Card Requests: the most common and sensitive approval flow.
YEAR
2025
ROLE
Product Designer
SERVICES
User Research
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Visual/UI Design
Design System Contribution
Delivery & Handoff
About the project
The challenge
Previously, permissions were fragmented: admins, team managers, and owners had overlapping abilities to issue cards, often without clear approval steps. This created risks:
- Lack of consistency across organizations
- No centralized way to define who must approve what
- Limited transparency for finance teams
- Edge cases that required manual workarounds
We needed to build a scalable framework where companies could customize their approval flows, while ensuring compliance and auditability.
Objectives
- Enable organizations to define approval rules with granular conditions (e.g., by team, role, or project).
- Replace scattered individual permissions with unified policies.
- Ensure every approval is logged, traceable, and auditable.
- Create a flexible system that can expand to future use cases like invoice payments or transaction reviews.
Phase 1: Rule builder
We introduced a new Approval Policies tab in the Organization Settings, giving admins and owners full control over how card requests are managed. I designed a rule builder that allows organizations to create flexible policies with conditions, layered approvals, and multi-step flows, making the system both powerful and intuitive. To ensure governance, we added a draft and publish flow, where rules can be collaboratively edited but only finalized by an owner. Every organization also benefits from a backup policy, acting as a safety net when no specific rule applies, so approvals never fall through the cracks. Beyond flexibility, I focused on creating a unified request flow, ensuring all card requests follow the same logic no matter where they are initiated. Finally, we emphasized transparency: approval steps are clearly surfaced in the UI, and every change is logged, giving finance teams confidence and traceability in their approval processes.
Card Requests’ page
Alongside the rule builder, I also designed a new dedicated “Card Requests” page within the Cards menu. This space allows users to clearly see all requests awaiting their approval or rejection. The decision to separate this from the main Cards page was intentional: by isolating the action of approving and rejecting from the broader card management view, we reduced noise and made it significantly easier for users to track their pending tasks. This design choice not only streamlined the workflow for approvers but also ensured that important actions wouldn’t get lost in the day-to-day navigation of the platform.
Impact
Consistency:All card requests follow one transparent approval process.
Efficiency:Finance teams can define rules once, reducing manual oversight.
Control:Organizations enforce compliance (e.g., requiring two approvers for large limits).
Scalability:This phase laid the groundwork for extending approval flows to reimbursements and transactions.
Outcome
Phase 1 launched with staged rollout across organizations. Early adoption showed strong engagement, with admins quickly moving from individual permissions to policy-based governance.
This first step established Approval Policies as the backbone for all future approval logic in Pliant.
Smooth Scroll
This will hide itself!
This will hide itself!