Invoice Approval Overview

Invoice approval is an optional feature that enables your company to set up an approval process for client invoices that must be completed before the invoices can be accepted and posted.

This feature enables you to move draft invoices more efficiently through the submittal, approval, and acceptance stages to produce final invoices. Electronic notification alerts are sent automatically to the appropriate employees to notify them that the next action in the approval process is ready for them to complete. You can enter approval comments for invoices that can be shared easily with others.

Enable and Set Up Invoice Approval for the Company

Invoice approval is only available if it is enabled for your company on the Miscellaneous tab of the Billing Setup form (Configuration > Billing > General).

Your company can set up multiple approval processes on the Invoice Approval Process form (Configuration > Billing > Invoice Approval Process). For a given project, you then select the appropriate approval process from a list of available processes. Each approval process includes 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.

Enable Invoice Approval for a Project

If invoice approval is enabled for your company, you have the option to enable or disable it for individual projects on the Misc tab of the Billing Terms form. If your company has more than one invoice approval process set up, you can also select the process you want to use for the project on that tab.

You enable invoice approval at the top level of the work breakdown structure (WBS) only. If the approver specified in the approval process is the project manager, the project manager for the top level of the WBS is the approver for all WBS levels of that project. Similarly, if you use billing groups, you enable invoice approval 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 WBS for the main project is the approver for all of the sub-projects in the billing group.

You can delegate responsibility for invoice approvals to another person on the User Options dialog box. That person receives the same approval alerts that Vision sends to you and the same access to approve and reject invoices in the Invoice Approvals and Interactive Approvals forms so that he or she can approve invoices in your place.

If invoice approval is enabled for a project, all invoices for the project must be approved before you can accept them for final billing.

Invoice Approval Process

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, Vision sends an alert to the person responsible for approving invoices for the project, as specified for the Submit action on the Invoice Approval form in Configuration. Once submitted, the invoice is available for review in Invoice Approvals and Interactive Approvals.
• Approval— The person responsible for approving invoices uses the Invoice Approvals form or Interactive Approvals form to review and approve submitted invoices. When an invoice is approved, Vision sends an alert to the person responsible for accepting invoices and initiating final billing for the project, as specified for the Approve action on the Invoice Approval form in Configuration.

  The approver can also reject a submitted invoice if he or she wants to alert another person so they can resolve the issues that caused the rejection. In that case, Vision sends an alert to the person designated to receive the rejection alert, as specified for the Reject action on the Invoice Approval form in Configuration.

The approver can also reject a submitted invoice if he or she wants to alert another person so they can resolve the issues that caused the rejection. In that case, Vision sends an alert to the person designated to receive the rejection alert, as specified for the Reject action on the Invoice Approval form in Configuration.

All approval-related email alerts have Deltek Vision Invoice Approval in the From field of the email.