Procurement Partners Invoice Approvals Feature

Description of Functionality

• This feature replaces the previous ‘bins’ system of invoice approvals.

• To activate the new Invoice Approvals system, please contact us at helpdesk@procurementpartners.com.

• Once the new system is turned on, you will see new page and action rights that you can assign to users and roles:

  • Invoice Approvals Management – allows access to the approval rule management tool.

  • Can Override Approval – allows the user to approve invoices that are not assigned to them.

  • User is Global AP – allows the user to see all invoices for the locations they have access to, and allows the user to see all of the options in the Invoice menu. We recommend giving all users this right.

• To make the new approval system active, you must save at least one job title workflow criteria using the Invoice Approval Management Tool (see below). Upon saving for the first time, you will receive a warning message stating that this will initiate the new system and will set all invoices currently pending any bin in the old system to the first workflow step of the new system.

• When viewing the invoice details page, you can open the Workflow tab on the right to see all of the steps that require approval for that invoice. This will also indicate which steps have been completed.

• The approval history can be viewed by clicking the Invoice Notes tab on the right.

• Daily consolidated invoice approval emails will be sent to users that have invoices pending their approval. The email will show the number of invoices pending their approval that are matched, matched with warnings, Duplicates, and Errors. The user can click on a link for each one to be taken to that screen with the appropriate filter applied so they can see, review, and approve the invoices. If they are not already logged in to the system, they will need to log in before they can approve invoices. This is for security purposes.

Using the Approval Rule Management Tool

• This tool is accessed by going to Management > Invoice Approvals.

• It is based on setting up approval criteria by job title.

• Drag a job title to the Approval Hierarchy in the order in which it should approve invoices, if its approval criteria is triggered.

• Click Set Criteria to select the conditions upon which that job title is required to approve an invoice. You can choose ‘Approve all invoices’ or you can choose ‘Approve Invoices Based On Set Criterias’. The latter option will allow you to set any combination of criteria requirements. The options are:

  • The job of the order creator

  • GL Code(s) that the invoice does or does not have

  • Whether or not the invoice has a PO

  • The invoice total amount greater/less than

  • The invoice line item amount (unit cost) greater/less than

  • The invoice extended line item amount (unit cost * quantity) greater/less than

  • The source of the invoice (EDI, TIM, etc.)

  • The vendor the invoice is or is not for

  • The facility the invoice is or is not for

• While you are on the Set/Edit Criteria screen, you can also choose a Backup Approver job title. Users with this job title can approve invoices that are assigned to the Primary Approver job title.

• You will see job titles you can add to the invoice approval workflow called ‘Order Creator’ and ‘Order Behalf Of’. The particular user that this references is dynamic depending on the PO tied to the invoice.

Other Notes

• If an invoice does not hit any workflow approval criteria, it will immediately show as Approved stage and can be batched for AP export.

• If there is no valid user for the job title which needs to approve the invoice, it will be up to a user with ‘Override approval’ ability to approve the invoice.

• Because users can have a primary and a secondary job title, it is possible they could be in multiple steps of an invoice approval workflow. If this is the case, they are not required to approve the invoice multiple times.