What are Approval Workflows?
Approval workflows are a great way for maintaining control and oversight over specific processes in your organization. They allow you to define sets of criteria and steps which need to be taken before an Invoice is approved.
Note: We currently only support approvals for invoices.
A walk-through video of an early version of the Invoice Approvals beta feature is available here.
Setting up your first Approval Workflow
Navigate to the Approval Workflows section
The Workflows screen is available under the Automation section from within Settings
Create a new Workflow
From there you can create a new Workflow. Workflows are created at the Billing Group level, and can be assigned to one or more companies. If you are creating multiple Workflows, it is recommended that a single company only ever has a maximum of one Workflow assigned to it.
Approvals Steps
Workflows can have multiple steps which are run in sequence when an Invoice is marked as Awaiting Approval. You can define each step with the criteria that must be met for the approval to be granted.
These criteria can include:
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how much an invoice is
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who can approve
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what conditions must be met
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and any escalations (triggered when an approval doesn’t happen within the designated time)
Once an invoice has met the criteria for each step, it will have the status of "Approved".
Example:
Let's say you have a Workflow setup with two steps.
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Step 1: PM to approve all invoices
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Step 2: CFO to approve invoices over $1,000.
If an expense invoice of $1,200 for a property is received, once the PM has approved it, it is then sent to the CFO for approval.
If an expense invoice for $800.00 is received: it is automatically sent to the PM for approval.
Managing Approvals
You can access the Approvals list page from the Accounting navigation bar.
Here you can view all of your outstanding and completed approvals. The filters act as a great way to find subsets of approvals - e.g. for a particular company or Property Manager.
You can also be notified via email if there are any pending approvals. You have a choice of:
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receiving an email per approval
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or receive a daily digest with your other tasks
These settings can be managed from your personal settings in the top right navigation bar.
Approving / Rejecting and Invoice
When you are approving an invoice, you’ll have a summary of the invoice, and who the current approver is. You can then approve the invoice, or decline the invoice and add a comment.
There is an audit log showing updates to the invoice approval workflow: when it was started, comments, and approvals/rejections, and by whom.