Case study / ERP
Expense, operations and approvals ERP for a manufacturer
- Client
- Manufacturing company
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Status
- Delivered in milestones
What we did
- ERP Development
- Process Automation
A complete expense and operations system for a manufacturing business: expenses with bills, multi-level approvals, budgets, fuel, vehicles, machinery and maintenance, purchases, vendors and reports.
The client tracked expenses across sites using paper bills, spreadsheets and phone approvals. Nobody could say how much had been spent against a budget until month end, and fuel and maintenance costs were hard to verify.
They needed one system that every site could use, with strict rules on who can approve what, a record of every change, and reports ready for management and auditors.
We delivered the system in milestones so the team could start using it early. Milestone one covered expenses, bills and approvals. Later milestones added plant operations (vehicles, fuel, transport, machinery and maintenance) and then procurement and finance (purchase orders, goods receipt, payments, budgets and reports).
Approval rules were designed with the client: nobody can approve, review or pay their own expense, and each role sees only what it should. Admin accounts are protected with two-step sign-in using an authenticator app.
Bills are stored privately in cloud storage with file checks on upload. Every action is written to an audit log, and reports export to PDF, Excel and CSV in one click.
Key features.
Expenses with bill upload
Staff record expenses from any device and attach photos or PDFs of bills.
Multi-level approvals
Clear approval chains with rules that stop anyone acting on their own expense.
Budgets with warnings
Spending tracked against budgets, with warnings before they are crossed.
Fuel and fleet
Vehicles, fuel entries and transport, with unusual fuel usage flagged for review.
Machinery and maintenance
Machines, service schedules, spare parts and maintenance costs.
Purchases and vendors
Purchase orders, goods receipt, vendor records and payments.
Roles, 2FA and audit log
Role-based access, authenticator-app sign-in for admins, and a full change history.
Reports and exports
Dashboards plus PDF, Excel and CSV exports for management and audits.
Screens from the working system
One journey, step by step.
01
Record
A site supervisor enters an expense and uploads the bill.
02
Review
The reviewer checks it against the budget and bill.
03
Approve
An approver signs off, following the company's rules.
04
Pay
Accounts marks it paid and the budget updates.
05
Report
Management sees live totals and exports reports any time.
What it is built with, and why.
Application
Next.js, React
One app for staff, approvers and admins, usable on phones at site.
Data
PostgreSQL, Prisma
Strong data integrity for financial records.
Storage
Amazon S3
Private, durable storage for bills and documents.
Hosting
Docker on a VPS with automated backups
Full control over data, with predictable monthly cost.
Approvals moved from phone calls to a tracked workflow
Live spend against budget instead of month-end surprises
A full audit trail for every expense and change
Reports ready for management and auditors in one click
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