ApproveThis manages your Mercury Integration approvals.

When Accounting Meets Approval Automation

Let's be real: financial approvals suck. You've got department heads emailing screenshots of Mercury transactions, CFOs chasing down signatures for wire transfers, and everyone pretending they remember what that $12,000 vendor payment was actually for. ApproveThis and Mercury fix this by turning financial oversight into something that happens in the background while you focus on actual work.

Here's the deal: Mercury tells you when money moves. ApproveThis tells people when they need to care about it. Connect them through Zapier, and you've built guardrails that keep finances tight without slowing things down. We're talking about cutting approval cycle times from days to hours while giving auditors a paper trail they'll actually love.

What Each Tool Does Best

Mercury is where your money lives - checking accounts, savings, virtual cards. It's great at showing balances and transaction details but wasn't built to decide whether that $45k developer agency invoice should get paid.

ApproveThis handles the "should we?" decisions. It's the system that knows:

• Whether your CTO needs to approve SaaS purchases over $5k
• Which department budgets get charged for AWS bills
• How to route international wire transfer sign-offs

Together through Zapier, they create closed-loop financial controls. Mercury detects the transaction, ApproveThis manages the human decision, then Mercury records the final action. No spreadsheets. No "I thought you approved this."

Three Ways This Combo Changes Financial Operations

1. Auto-Flag Suspicious Account Activity

Say a $28,000 withdrawal hits your Mercury checking account. With our first Zapier template, that balance change immediately creates an ApproveThis request. Your CFO gets an email asking "Did you authorize this?" with one-click approve/deny. If denied, your finance team gets alerted to investigate potential fraud.

Real-world impact: A 120-person cybersecurity firm used this to catch a compromised vendor account attempting a $17k phishing withdrawal. The approval request went out at 3:12 AM, was denied by 6:30 AM, and funds were frozen before business hours.

2. Approve Expenses Before They Hit

Mercury's virtual cards are great for controlling spend. Now pair them with ApproveThis' thresholds: Any transaction over $X gets auto-flagged for pre-approval. Marketing team swipes $8k on ad spend? The request routes to their VP with campaign details attached. Under $500? It auto-approves per your policies.

Cool feature alert: Use ApproveThis' calculated fields to check remaining department budgets in real time. If the purchase would exceed Q3 allocations, it escalates to the CFO regardless of amount.

3. Sync Approvals Across Entities

Got multiple Mercury accounts for subsidiaries? When a transfer between entities hits a threshold, ApproveThis can require dual sign-off from both entity controllers. All without those managers needing access to each other's Mercury accounts.

Setting This Up Without IT Involvement

Here's why your finance team will actually use this:

1. Connect to Zapier: Both ApproveThis and Mercury have pre-built Zapier integrations. No API keys needed - just log in.
2. Pick Your Triggers: Choose between Mercury balance changes or new transactions as your starting point.
3. Map the Data: Tell ApproveThis which Mercury details to include in requests (amount, account, transaction ID).
4. Set Approval Rules: Define who approves what based on amount, department codes, or vendor categories.

Total setup time? About 15 minutes if you know your approval policies. Less time than it takes to explain your current process to a new hire.

Who Benefits (Besides Your Auditors)

Finance Teams

Stop being the approval police. Pre-configured rules in ApproveThis mean you only get involved when exceptions happen. Plus, every approved/denied decision is timestamped with the reasoning - goodbye month-end reconciliation fights.

Department Heads

Product leads get automatic visibility into engineering cloud costs. Marketing VPs can approve big campaign spends from their phone. All without needing Mercury logins or finance degrees.

External Partners

Contractor submitted a Mercury invoice? Route it to their client PM for approval in ApproveThis. No need to give outsiders access to your financial systems.

The Nuts and Bolts You Care About

No Double Licenses

ApproveThis approvers don't need Mercury seats. Your external accountant can approve year-end adjustments without seeing daily transactions.

Audit Trail That Makes Sense

Every approval ties back to the actual Mercury transaction ID. Dispute a payment? Pull up the ApproveThis record to see who approved it, when, and what notes they added.

Vacation Coverage That Works

CFO out on leave? ApproveThis automatically reroutes approvals to their deputy based on Mercury transaction dates. No more "I was OOO" excuses.

When to Consider This Integration

If any of these sound familiar:

• You've had duplicate payments because someone "forgot" they approved an invoice
• Month-end close takes longer because approvers won't reply to Slack pings
• Vendors complain about late payments despite PO approvals

This isn't about fixing one process - it's about making financial oversight something that happens automatically as part of daily work.

Getting Started (Without the Sales Pitch)

Try this today:

1. Create a Zapier account (free tier works)
2. Connect your Mercury account
3. Connect ApproveThis
4. Set up one test Zap (we recommend the new transaction → approval request flow)

If it clicks for your team, great. If not, you're out 20 minutes and some coffee. But based on what we've seen at 500+ companies? Once finance teams realize they can stop chasing approvals, they don't go back.

Next step: Grab an ApproveThis trial, plug in your Mercury account via Zapier, and route one real transaction through it this week. Your future self (and your auditors) will thank you.