The 72-hour approval tax: what slow leave, expense and purchase sign-offs really cost a 100-person company, and how VegaHQ auto-routing cuts turnaround to hours

Your Slowest Approvals Are Costing More Than You Think

Most companies track salaries, rent and software bills to the rupee. Almost none track what it costs when a leave request, expense claim or purchase order sits unapproved for three days. By the end of this post you'll know how to estimate that hidden cost and what actually brings it down.

01What the approval tax looks like

A request goes to a manager who is travelling. The employee pings twice. HR sends a reminder. A vendor waits. None of this appears on a report, yet each loop burns minutes and goodwill.

02A quick way to put a number on it

Take an illustrative 100-person company with about 300 requests a month. If each triggers two follow-ups of 10 minutes, that's 100 hours a month, more than half of one person's working time, spent chasing. Add delayed purchases and late reimbursements, and the real figure climbs further. Plug in your own request volume and hourly cost to see your number.

03Where delays actually come from

Most stalls aren't reluctance. They're routing: requests going to the wrong person, no backup approver, no deadline, and approvals only possible at a desk.

04How VegaHQ cuts turnaround to hours

VegaHQ routes each request by rule, escalates automatically if nobody acts within a set window, lets managers approve with one tap on mobile, and shows a live dashboard of where requests stall. Follow-ups drop because the system does the chasing.

05My take

If you handle fewer than 50 requests a month, fix routing rules first and measure. If you're above 200, automated escalation plus mobile approvals will pay back fast, and the turnaround dashboard alone will show you which bottleneck to fix first. Start with expense claims; they're where employees feel delay most.