Field notes
Approval matrices that look fine on paper and fail in the queue
Most Taiwanese mid-size companies keep an approval matrix that names thresholds by role. The document is tidy. The invoice queue is not.
Delegations are the first fracture. A department head is traveling; a deputy stamps invoices above their written limit. Email trails sometimes exist, sometimes not. A later AP approval review cannot invent missing authorizations — it can only report them.
Shared mailboxes create a second fracture. Multiple people use one login to clear a backlog. The matrix assumes a named individual. The system shows a mailbox identity. Findings memos should separate those cases from outright missing approvals.
When we sample for clients, we ask for the matrix version that was in force during the review period, not the one updated last week. Version drift is itself a finding worth recording.
Remediation that works tends to be narrow: freeze one high-threshold mailbox, restore named approvers for amounts above a set line, and re-test a fresh sample after thirty days.