Document Approvals

Document Approvals holds the payment of a bill or an expense until the people you name have approved it. You set an amount for bills and one for expenses; a document at or above it asks your approvers, and until every one of them has approved, no payment can be recorded against it. Nothing else waits: the document saves and posts to your books as it always did.

How It Runs, in Order

1. You switch the module on, set the thresholds and name the approvers
2. A bill or an expense is created, or its total changes, at or above the threshold
3. Every approver is asked at the same moment — a notification, and a row in their Approvals list
4. The document carries on as normal: it saves and posts to your books. Only recording a payment is held
5. Each approver clicks Approve or Reject
6. Once all of them have approved, the payment can be recorded. If one rejects, payment stays held until the total is changed, which asks everyone again

Setting Up

Document Approval Settings has three cards:

• Enable Document Approvals — the switch Enable document approvals. It is the same module switch as the one on the Features page. Saving with it off also clears the thresholds and the approver list
• Approval Thresholds — a Bill Threshold and an Expense Threshold, whole numbers only. A document whose total is at or above the threshold needs approval
• Default Approvers — click Add Approver and choose a team member. Owners, admins and managers are offered. Add as many as you need

Everyone on the approver list is asked at the same time, and every one of them must approve. One rejection marks the document rejected. The numbers beside the names are only the order they are listed in. With nobody on the list, nobody is asked and no payment is held.

Click Save Settings. You need the Manage company settings permission to open the page.

What Asks for Approval

A request is made when a bill or an expense is created, or when its total changes, and the total is at or above the threshold. It does not matter how the document came to exist — typed in, scanned, converted from a purchase order, duplicated or generated by a recurring schedule.

• Imported documents never ask. A bill or expense with the status Imported is history that was settled elsewhere
• A changed total starts again from nothing. The earlier decisions are removed and every approver is asked afresh, because an approval given for one amount says nothing about another. If the new total is under the threshold, the requests are removed and nothing is held
• Changing anything else asks nobody. A new date, supplier or description leaves the decisions as they are
• Settings are not applied backwards. A new threshold or approver list applies to documents created or re-totalled from then on. A document that existed before you switched the module on is not held unless its total changes

Approving and Rejecting

Each approver gets a notification in the app — for example Bill BILL-0042 requires your approval — which opens Purchases → Approvals. The list shows only the requests addressed to you: the document number (a link to the bill or expense), its type, amount, date and status. It opens on Pending; the filters switch to Approved, Rejected or All Statuses, and to Bills or Expenses, and the search looks in the document number and description.

• Approve asks you to confirm
• Reject opens Reject Document, with an optional Reason for Rejection that is shown on the document

The same two buttons are on the bill or expense itself. Its Approval Chain card lists every approver with their decision, when it was made and any reason given, under one badge: Awaiting Approval, Rejected or Fully Approved. Only the named approver can decide their own request, and a decision cannot be changed once it is made.

The person recorded as the bill's creator is notified of each decision. For an expense it is the employee the expense belongs to, when that employee has a login.

What Is Held

Only recording a payment. While an approver has still to approve, or one has rejected, you cannot:

• use Record Payment on the bill
• record a payment against the bill or the expense from Accounts → Payments
• use Mark as Paid on the expense
• use Mark Completed on a pending payment against the bill or the expense, on Accounts → Payments

You are told why: Payment is on hold until every approver has approved this document. or, after a rejection, Payment is on hold: an approver rejected this document. Once it is put right, ask for approval again.

Everything else carries on. The document saves, can be edited, and posts to your books exactly as it would without approvals.

After a rejection, put the document right, then press Ask for approval again in the hold notice on the bill or the expense: the old decisions are removed and every approver is asked again. Changing the total does the same on its own. Switching the module off releases everything that was held.