data.day
approvals / audit / risk management / compliance

The Wire Transfer That Never Happened: A Case Study in Approval Fog

A Slack emoji is not a signature. We analyze how 'informal approvals' create financial panic and how to build a boring, bulletproof audit trail.

Klara Budget Klara Budget

Panic is Expensive

Last week, a client called me in a panic. A critical supplier had stopped service. The server hosting was down. The team was screaming.

“But we approved that invoice two weeks ago!” the founder shouted.

I checked the accounting system. The invoice was there. It was drafted. It was not paid.

Why? because the “approval” happened in a Slack channel called #random between a gif of a cat and a lunch order. The Finance Manager saw it, meant to pay it, got distracted, and forgot.

Because there was no system state change, there was no record. The approval was a ghost.

This downtime cost them €4,000 in lost sales. A formal approval button costs €0.

The Audit Risk: The “He Said, She Said” Trap

We treat company money with less security than we treat our Netflix passwords.

When you rely on chat apps, email threads, or “hallway nods” to authorize payments, you are building a house on sand. This is Approval Fog.

In this fog, nobody knows who holds the ball.

  • The Ops Manager thinks sending the PDF was the trigger.
  • The CEO thinks the thumbs-up emoji was the trigger.
  • The Finance Lead is waiting for a formal “OK” that never comes.

When the audit comes—and if you grow, it will come—the auditor will ask: “Who authorized this €10,000 transfer?”

If your answer is “Let me search through my Slack history from 2024,” you have failed. An audit should be boring. Searching through chat logs is exciting. Excitement in finance is bad. It means you are out of control.

[Image of diagram showing a tangled mess of arrows labeled “Slack”, “Email”, “WhatsApp” pointing to a sad face labeled “Unpaid Invoice”]

The Control: The Binary Switch

We need to turn “Approvals” from a conversation into a data point.

A valid approval has three components:

  1. Identity: Who did it? (User ID, not “Dave”)
  2. Timestamp: When did they do it? (UTC, not “Tuesdayish”)
  3. State Change: The system prevents payment until the flag is raised.

You do not need enterprise software for this. You need a rule.

The “No-Go” Protocol:

  • Rule 1: Finance does not monitor Slack for bills. If it is not in the approval queue, it does not exist.
  • Rule 2: Segregation of Duties. The person who inputs the IBAN cannot be the person who clicks “Approve.”
  • Rule 3: The “Audit Trail” is sacred.

Implementation is simple. Most modern accounting tools have a basic approval tab. Turn it on.

If the CEO complains that logging in to click a button is “too much friction,” ask them: “Is it more friction than the server going down?”

Conclusion

Stop managing cash flow with emojis. A thumbs-up pays zero bills.

Meten is weten. If you cannot measure who approved the bill, you do not know where your money is going.

FAQs

Is Slack really that bad for approvals?

Yes. Slack is for chatter. Slack messages can be edited or deleted. An approval needs to be immutable.

We are a small team, do we need formal approvals?

Especially you. In small teams, the lines are blurred. One wrong wire transfer kills your cash flow. Formalize it to survive.

What if the CEO just tells me verbally to pay?

Then you send an email: 'Confirming your verbal instruction to pay X.' Make them write 'Yes.' Cover your back.