Honestly, this is the part I don't get. First of all, that's on your employer, who apparently values $40 more than the time it takes you to fill out the paperwork, your manager / approver to approve it, the travel and compliance team to review it, etc.

Second, I keep seeing this weird fantasy where all airfare automatically costs exactly the same amount. Perhaps that's true on the routes that some people fly, but for me, that's rarely the case. Sure, they'll often be close, but day-to-day inventory variance wins out. I've found days when UA is $100 more expensive than their competition, and I've found days when UA is $100 less than their competition -- just because somebody in Revenue Management did or didn't open up the W bucket on a given flight.

So, if you have to fill out paperwork every time you spend $40 more than the minimum, did you never have to fill out the same paperwork before? Here, let's use the specific SFO-SEA example that I see on this thread all the time. 7 days out, Tuesday to Friday -- and, hey, UA even killed BE. Assuming your travel policy won't force you to take F9 through DEN -- at $328, it's the lowest price I see on ITA -- then you get a choice of a lot of flights at $343. But the earliest flight is AS at $385. In fact, all of AS's flights before 11:40 AM are $385. So, if you wanted to fly AS, and you didn't want to waste the day in the airport, you'd have to get special approval?