Draft Invoice Approvals
If the billing invoice approval feature is enabled for your company and you are responsible for approving invoices for billing, use Draft Invoice Approvals to review submitted invoices, make changes to them, and approve or reject them.
If a billing draft invoice that you are responsible for approving has been submitted for approval for the currently selected project, an exclamation mark displays next to the Draft Invoice Approvals application name on the Navigation pane in .
Only draft invoices with a Submitted status display in Draft Invoice Approvals. You will not see invoices with a New, Approved, or Rejected status in Draft Invoice Approvals.
Enable Invoice Approvals and Set Up Approval Processes
Enable invoice approvals for your company on the Billing Options form in
.Your company can set up multiple approval processes on the Invoice Approval Process form (
in the desktop application). For each approval process, you determine who can approve and reject invoices (project managers or principals, for example), who receives alerts at each stage of the process, and the type and frequency of those alerts.Invoice Approval Process
The invoice approval process sends alerts 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.
The normal approval process includes the following stages:
- Submittal: The person responsible for submitting invoices for the project uses either Interactive Billing or Batch Billing to submit the invoice for approval. When an invoice is submitted, Vantagepoint sends an alert to the person responsible for approving invoices for the project. Once submitted, the invoice is available for review in Draft Invoice Approvals and Invoice Approvals in the Billing application.
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Approval: The person who is responsible for approving invoices reviews and approves submitted invoices in either Draft Invoice Approvals or Invoice Approvals. The approver can also reject a submitted invoice. In that case, an alert is sent to the person designated to receive the rejection alert so that the recipient can address any problems with the invoice.
If you have the Use Markup on Draft Invoices feature turned on, a reviewer can mark up the draft invoice with annotations, in addition to comments, to let a biller know specific changes to make to the invoice before the biller accepts and sends the invoice to the client.
When an invoice is approved, an alert is sent to the person responsible for accepting invoices and initiating final billing for the project.
Enable Invoice Approval for a Project
If Invoice Approvals are enabled for your company, you can enable or disable them for individual projects. If your company has more than one invoice approval process set up, you can also select the process that you want to use for the project. Both settings are in the company-specific section of the Billing Options form in
.You enable Invoice Approval and select an approval process at the top level of the work breakdown structure. For example, if you choose an approval process in which the project manager is the approver, the project manager for the top level of the work breakdown structure will be the approver for all lower work breakdown structure levels, too.
Similarly, if you use billing groups, you enable Invoice Approvals for a billing group by enabling it for the main project. In that case, if the project manager is the approver specified in the approval process, the project manager for the top level of the work breakdown structure for the main project is the approver for all of the sub-projects in the billing group.
If invoice approval is enabled for a project, all invoices for the project must be approved before you can accept them for final billing.
Delegate Responsibility for Approvals
You can delegate responsibility for invoice approvals to another person. That person receives the same approval alerts that you would normally receive and has the same access to approve and reject invoices. To delegate responsibility, on the toolbar, click and click My Preferences. On the General tab, select the Delegate Approvals to option.
Additional Information
For additional information about the invoice approval process, see the Approving Invoices section of the Billing help.
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After filling in the invoice information, you can proceed with the approval process. - Fields and Options
Use the forms and dialog boxes to review and edit invoices, and approve or reject them.