Invoice approval automation
- Net saving a month after the software
- $4,195
- Hours a month on payables today
- 220
- What that costs a month
- $7,040
Every figure here comes from the figures you enter and the method stated beside it: your invoice volume, your team's hourly cost, your own purchase-order coverage and your own tolerance. Where a worksheet uses a published constant it names the source and the date it was read. This site publishes no accounting treatment, no tax position and no audit opinion; what a transaction should be booked as is your accountant's and your auditor's.
Invoice approval automation is the part of payables that involves people who do not work in finance. An invoice needs a budget holder to agree it, that person is busy and elsewhere, and the invoice sits until they do. Automating it means routing the invoice to the right person with everything they need to decide, chasing them without anybody in AP doing the chasing, and recording the decision against the invoice permanently.
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Route by rule, not by memory
Who approves what is a rule about cost centre, amount and category rather than something the AP team holds in its head. Written as a rule it survives people leaving and it can be shown to an auditor.
Give the approver enough to decide
The approver sees the invoice, the purchase order it belongs to and what was received, on one screen and on a phone. Most approval delay is not reluctance, it is somebody not having the context to say yes.
Chase automatically and escalate on time
Reminders go out on a schedule and unanswered approvals escalate to a named alternate after an agreed period, so an invoice never waits on one person's inbox. The whole trail is dated against the invoice.
Invoice approval automation: common questions
Why do invoices sit in approval so long? Almost always because the approver lacks context rather than because they object. An approval request that arrives with the order and the receipt attached gets answered far faster than one that asks them to go and look.
What should the approval rules be based on? Cost centre, amount and category, written down rather than remembered. Rules held in one person's head fail the moment that person is on holiday, and cannot be evidenced when an auditor asks who was allowed to approve what.
What happens if an approver never responds? A working system escalates to a named alternate after an agreed period rather than leaving the invoice to age. Deciding that period and that alternate in advance is what stops late-payment problems being blamed on AP.
Will it do what you need for Invoice approval automation?
Tell us how your payables process runs today and what you are trying to get out of it.