01
Capital strategy
Where should capital go over the long term?
Sets the investment direction, the total envelope and the balance between maintaining existing capacity, meeting regulatory obligations and building new capability.
Capex process
Inside the capex process: six decisions between a strategy and a built asset
Overview
A sound capex process keeps the reasoning behind an investment intact from strategy through delivery and review.
- Topic
- Capex process
- Written by
- Weissr Capex Experts
- Published
- 10 September 2026
- Reading time
- 9 min read
The short answer
What is the capex process?
The capex process is the end-to-end cycle through which an organisation decides, authorises, delivers and reviews capital investments. It has six connected phases: capital strategy, capex planning, capital budgeting, approval, execution and post-investment review.
Treated as six separate exercises, the process leaks. Assumptions made during planning are gone by the time a request is approved; the case that justified an investment is unavailable when its cost is questioned; and nobody checks afterwards whether the promised benefit arrived. A connected cycle carries the reasoning from one phase into the next and gives capital governance a consistent basis.
The six phases
One cycle.Six connected decisions.
02
Capex planning
Which investments make the plan, and in what order?
Candidate investments from every site are classified, scored on consistent criteria and ranked against strategic contribution, risk of deferral and delivery capacity.
03
Capital budgeting
What is actually funded this period?
The agreed plan becomes an approved budget with allocation pools, timing, contingency and authority limits. Every subsequent request draws on this envelope.
04
Approval
Is this specific investment authorised?
Each request is validated against available budget and routed through the delegation-of-authority matrix, producing an auditable record of who decided what and when.
05
Execution
Are we delivering what was approved?
Projects run against the approved baseline with live cost, commitment and forecast-at-completion tracking, and scope changes re-enter approval at the correct authority level.
06
Post-investment review
Did the investment deliver its case?
Delivered cost, schedule and realised benefit are compared with the approved case, producing evidence that improves the next round of estimating and prioritisation.
Capex vs opex
What counts as capital expenditure
Capital expenditure creates or extends an asset: it is capitalised on the balance sheet and depreciated over the asset's useful life. Operating expenditure is consumed in the period and expensed immediately. The distinction also determines approval authority, reporting treatment and, in most jurisdictions, tax position. We unpack it in Capex vs Opex.
In practice the boundary cases matter most: major overhauls, software implementations, spare-parts strategies and turnaround work often sit close to the line. A capex process that classifies these consistently avoids both understated capital plans and disputes at audit.
Where it breaks
Why the capex process leaks in multi-site groups
Each phase is usually owned by a different function and lives in a different tool. Strategy is a slide deck. Planning is a set of spreadsheets that diverge within days of being circulated. Budgeting happens in the finance system. Approval happens in email and a signing tool. Execution happens in a project tool that knows nothing about the investment case. Review usually does not happen at all.
Each handover makes it easier to lose assumptions, decisions and changes. An organisation can therefore have strong controls within each function but still deliver a portfolio that no longer reflects the original priorities.
Improving the process
Six changes that make the biggest difference
- Standardise intake per investment category so requests are comparable.
- Score and rank candidates on the same criteria, at every site.
- Reserve mandatory compliance investments before discretionary competition.
- Enforce delegation of authority in the system, not in a policy document.
- Keep forecast at completion live against the approved baseline.
- Run post-investment reviews and feed the results into the next plan.
Key takeaways
- The capex process runs from capital strategy through planning, budgeting, approval and execution to post-investment review.
- Most value is lost at the handovers between phases, not inside them.
- Comparable intake and consistent scoring are what make prioritisation defensible.
- Delegation of authority must be enforced by the system to be a real control.
- Post-investment review is the only mechanism that improves estimating over time.
Product
Capex Planning
Turn competing requests into one prioritised plan.
Blog
The capex approval process
The approval phase in detail, stage by stage.
Product
Capex Management
Govern execution against the approved case.
Product
Capex Strategy
Where the process starts: long-term investment direction.
Product
Capital Budgeting Software
Convert the agreed plan into a funded, governed budget.
By role
FP&A & Capital Planning
How planning teams run the cycle end to end.
Follow Weissr on LinkedInfor new Capex Blog posts.
Keep reading
All Capex Blog posts
Capex maturity
How Mature Is Your Capex Process? Find Out in 3 Minutes
Signs your Capex process has not kept pace with the business, and a three-minute assessment to see where you stand.
4 min read
Buyer's guide
Best capital planning software: a buyer's guide for finance leaders
How to tell capex, capital planning and project software apart, and ten criteria to check before you compare vendors.
13 min read
CEO perspective
Capital Allocation is Your Strategy
Why the companies that outperform on capex will not be those that invest most, but those that allocate best and reallocate fastest.
9 min read
CEO perspective
The Tail Wags the Dog: Your Capex Process Is Quietly Writing Your Strategy
Every approved project can have a positive NPV while the portfolio still takes the company somewhere leadership never chose.
8 min read
Capex fundamentals
Capex vs Opex: the line that decides who gets to say yes
Capital expenditure and operating expenditure explained in plain language, with examples, a comparison table and the practical effect on financial governance.
8 min read
Capex fundamentals
Capex, explained: what capital expenditure really means in practice
A plain-language introduction to capital expenditure: the categories, the vocabulary, and how capex actually moves through an industrial organisation.
7 min read
Capex governance
Why capex approvals take months and what actually shortens them
A practical look at the capex approval process, where delays arise and how each stage should work.
9 min read
Capex forecasting
Why capex forecasts are inaccurate, and why the miss goes unmeasured
Why replacing each quarterly forecast makes accuracy difficult to measure, and what companies lose when the history disappears.
8 min read
Our story
The Weissr story: from capex advisory work to a Capex Platform
Where Weissr comes from: the founders, the methodology behind the book and how it became a platform for the whole Capex cycle.
7 min read
Capex Maturity Assessment
What's yourCapex maturity level?
Answer a short set of questions on process, data, visibility and cash flow, and get a report showing your level in each area.
Take the assessmentCapex process
Questions about the capex process,answered directly.
What is the capex process?
The capex process is the end-to-end cycle through which an organisation decides, authorises, delivers and reviews capital investments. It has six connected phases: capital strategy, capex planning, capital budgeting, approval, execution and post-investment review.
What are the phases of the capex process?
Capital strategy sets the direction and the funding envelope. Capex planning turns candidate investments into a prioritised plan. Capital budgeting converts the plan into an approved, funded budget. Approval authorises individual requests. Execution delivers them against the approved baseline. Post-investment review compares outcome with case and feeds the next cycle.
What is capex management?
Capex management is the operational half of the capex process: governing approvals, tracking committed and actual cost against the approved budget, forecasting completion, controlling scope changes and confirming benefit realisation at close-out.
How is capex different from opex?
Capital expenditure creates or extends an asset and is capitalised on the balance sheet and depreciated over its useful life. Operating expenditure is consumed in the period and expensed immediately. The distinction affects approval authority, reporting and, in most jurisdictions, tax treatment.
Why do capex processes break down in multi-site organisations?
Because the phases are handled in different systems by different functions. Strategy lives in slides, planning in spreadsheets, approval in email, execution in a project tool and review nowhere at all. Each handover loses assumptions, so the delivered portfolio drifts from the strategy that justified it.
How can the capex process be improved?
Standardise the intake so requests are comparable, prioritise on consistent criteria, enforce delegation of authority in the system rather than in a policy document, keep the forecast live against the approved baseline, and run post-investment reviews so estimating improves cycle over cycle.
What software supports the capex process?
A capex platform supports the full cycle in one system, connecting strategy, planning, budgeting, approval and execution, and integrating with the ERP so approved amounts, commitments and actual costs stay reconciled without manual re-entry.
Run the whole capex cyclein one platform.
See how strategy, planning, budgeting, approval and execution connect in Weissr.
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