Electronic approval is usually sold on speed, and speed is real. The more durable benefit is the record. An approval given by email reply exists in a personal mailbox belonging to somebody who may leave, whose mailbox may be deleted, and whose archive nobody can search. An approval captured by a system exists in the organisation's record, attached to the invoice it authorised.
What a good approval record contains
The approver's identity, the date and time, the amount approved, the documents they were shown, and any comment they made. The last two matter more than they look: an approver who saw only a reference number has not really approved the expenditure, and a comment often explains a decision that otherwise looks wrong a year later.
Why the mailbox is the wrong home
Personal mailboxes are deleted, archived inconsistently and searched with difficulty. Every organisation that has tried to reconstruct an approval trail from email during an audit or a dispute has discovered this. The cost of capturing it properly at the time is zero, because the approval is happening anyway.
Segregation, which the record makes visible
The same person should not raise, approve and pay the same invoice. Electronic approval makes that testable rather than assumed, because the record shows who did what. Whether your particular structure is adequate is a question for your own controls and your auditor, but you cannot even ask it without the record.
Questions people ask about electronic ap approval
Is an email approval acceptable?
Many organisations rely on it. It is a record with a weak home, and its weakness only becomes apparent when the person or the mailbox is gone.
Should approvers see the invoice image?
Yes. Approving a summary line is approving a number rather than an expenditure, and the difference matters in exactly the cases where it matters most.
How long should approval records be kept?
Align them with the retention you apply to the invoices themselves; the approval is part of the record of the transaction.