Checklist: Enable and Set Up Approvals for Accounts Payable Invoices

You can set up a process for approving accounts payable invoices.

You upload and approve AP invoices that you receive from vendors in Transaction Center > AP Invoice Approvals.

Checklist for Configuring and Enabling Approvals for Accounts Payable Invoices

Step	Description	Location
1	The Accounting application must be activated.	Transaction Center > AP Invoice Approvals
2	If you use the Vantagepoint on-premises product, you must configure Transaction Document Management and have Microsoft SQL Server FileStream enabled. FileStream is required for uploading accounts payable vendor invoices into Vantagepoint. It is required before you can create and enable an approval workflow for the AP Invoice Approvals application. For more information about configuring Transaction Document Management and FileStream, see Configuring Supporting Documents .
3	If you use organizations in Vantagepoint and you want accounts payable invoices to be approved by someone at the organization level, add approval roles at the organization level. Assign an employee to the approval role.	Create approval roles for all of your organizations in Settings > Organization > General in the desktop application. Assign approval roles to your organizations and assign one employee to an approval role. You can do this in one of two locations in the desktop application: Settings > Organization > General: Assign one or more organizations to an approval role and assign one employee to the approval role. This allows you to set up approval roles for all of your organizations in one place without having to look at each organization individually. Settings > Organization > Individual: Assign one or more approval roles to each individual organization, then assign one employee to each approval role.
4	Create an approval workflow for accounts payable invoices.	Settings > Workflow > Approval Workflows in the desktop application. When you create an approval workflow, select AP Invoice Approvals in the Application field on the General tab. On the Workflow tab, set up the approval steps for the workflow, and add approvers and notification alerts and/or actions for each step. You can also add a validate error action to an approval step so that an error message displays when an approver tries to approve a step but information is missing in required fields.
5	Enable approvals for accounts payable invoices, and assign an approval workflow	Settings > Cash Management > Accounts Payable In the Company-specific section of the Options tab in Accounts Payable Settings, set the Enable Approval Workflow for AP Invoice option to Yes and use the AP Invoice Approval Workflow option to select the approval workflow. When you save these settings, the next time that an employee submits an AP invoice in Transaction Center > AP Invoice Approvals, the approval process starts for an AP invoice.