Approving Billing Invoices

Using an approval process for billing invoices is an optional feature in Vantagepoint.

You turn on the invoice approval feature in Settings > Billing > Options. If you track multiple companies in Vantagepoint, you turn on this feature per company. Then, on a project-by-project basis, you can enable invoice approvals in a project's billing terms and specify the approval process to use. Billing invoices for projects that have invoice approvals enabled must be submitted and approved before you can accept and generate final invoices for them.

An invoice approval process requires that one or more employees approve a draft invoice. Electronic alerts are automatically sent to the appropriate employees to notify them that the next action in the approval process is ready for them to complete. Approvers can share comments about the draft invoices.

For information on enabling and setting up the approval process for billing invoices, see Checklist for Enabling and Configuring Billing Invoice Approvals.

Invoice Approval Process

The common invoice approval process includes the following steps:

Step	Description	Where to Perform the Step
1. Submit a draft invoice.	The person responsible for submitting invoices for a project submits an invoice for approval. An alert is automatically sent to the person or group of people who are responsible for approving invoices for the project to let them know that an invoice is ready for their review and approval.	In either: Billing > Interactive Billing Billing > Batch Billing
2. Approve the draft invoice.	The approver, or group of approvers (usually a project manager or principal), reviews the submitted invoice and approves or rejects it. When an invoice is rejected, an alert is automatically sent to the appropriate people, so that they can address any problems with the invoice and resubmit it. When the invoice is approved, the person who is responsible for accepting and generating the final invoice (usually a biller) is automatically alerted, and then makes any changes per the approver's comments before final accepting and generating the invoice.	You can approve or reject invoices in either: Billing > Invoice Approvals Hubs > Projects > Draft Invoice Approvals You can approve, but not reject invoices in Billing > Interactive Billing.

Draft Invoice Approvals Application in the Projects Hub

The Approving Billing Invoices section of the Billing help covers the steps related to invoice approving that you complete in Interactive Billing, Batch Billing, or Invoice Approvals in the Billing application. For more information about using the Draft Invoice Approvals application in the Projects hub to review and approve invoices, see the Draft Invoice Approvals help.

Delegate Responsibility for Approvals

As an invoice approver, you can delegate your responsibility for approving invoices to another person, for example, when you go on a vacation and will not be available to approve invoices. The delegate receives the same approval alerts that you normally receive and has the same access to approve and reject invoices. You (the delegator) continue to receive alerts (along with the delegate), so that you are aware of any approvals processed in your absence. The delegate can approve various types of records on your behalf, but only if their role security allows access to the menu items from which to approve records as well as access to specific records, such as projects and employees.

For more information, see Delegate Approval Responsibilities.