What employees and reviewers are notified about during review
Which in-app notifications and emails go out when you act on an expense, so you know exactly what employees and reviewers receive at each step.
When you act on an expense in CLVR, the employee (and any reviewer you add) is kept in the loop automatically. Each action sends an in-app notification, and most also send an email. This article walks through what goes out for every step, so you know what the employee sees before you ask them to follow up.
Adding a reviewer
When you use Add approver to bring another employee into the review, that person is notified in-app that they have been added as a reviewer, with a link to open the expense. In production they also get an email pointing them to the review. This is how a colleague learns it is their turn to look at a report.
Requesting changes
When you choose Request changes and send your instructions with Send request, the employee gets both:
- An in-app notification that their expense report needs changes, flagged as needing action.
- An email containing the instructions you wrote, plus the expense details (category, provider, date).
Your instructions travel with both, so the employee knows exactly what to fix before they resubmit.
Write the instructions as a clear, short to-do. The full text is what the employee reads in their email and in-app, so "Re-upload a clearer receipt that shows the date" is more useful than "fix receipt".
Approving a report
When a report is fully approved, the employee gets an in-app notification that their expense report has been approved, plus an approval email.
The important detail is timing: if your company uses an approval flow or multiple reviewers, the employee is told only once the report is fully approved, not after each individual reviewer signs off. Intermediate approvals do not notify the employee, so they are never told "approved" while more reviewers still need to act.
Declining a report
When you Decline a report, the employee gets an in-app notification that it was declined, plus a decline email that includes the reason you entered. Because a decline always finalises the whole report, the employee can read the reason, fix the issue, and submit again.
Reverting an AI decision
If your company has AI auto-approval and you revert an AI decision, the employee is emailed that their expense is back in manual review. The expense returns to a pending state for a person to review.
Language of the emails
Decision and review emails are sent to the employee in their own language when they have set one. CLVR uses the employee's saved language preference if they have chosen one in their profile; otherwise it follows the language you were working in. Reviewers added to a report are emailed in their own saved language too.
Troubleshooting
- The employee says they got no email. In-app notifications always send; emails can be held back by corporate email security. Ask them to check spam, and confirm their email address is correct in CLVR.
- A reviewer did not get an email but sees the notification. Reviewer emails send in production only, while the in-app notification always appears. The reviewer can still open the expense from their notification.
- They were not told it was approved yet. With multiple reviewers or an approval flow, the approval notification only fires once everyone has signed off. Check the remaining reviewers on the report.