About Vendor Invoice Approvals

Learning Resource: Vendor Invoice Approvals Overview video

With the new Vendor Invoice approval process, project managers and financial leaders in a firm can approve vendor invoices before they can be paid. These approvals are customized to your firm's specific needs and can be defined by approval type, vendor type, and amount. Approvers can view invoices and corresponding attachments in the new Vendor Invoice Approvals application where they can approve or reject the invoice leaving detailed notes. This gives visibility into payables earlier in the process increasing accuracy and reducing payable and billing process time.

With the Vendor Invoice Approval application, you can approve, unapprove, reject, and unreject a single vendor invoice or multiple invoices in the browser, if your role allows it. You can also use the browser application to view invoice approval history, as well as invoice details and view or add invoice attachments.

You define your firm's specific approval rules in Company > Preferences by type of approver, Project Manager and Finance, that your firm wants to use. For each approver type, you define if they are approving consultant and non-consultant type invoices. You can also set approvals automatically for each type based on an amount threshold. This provides the flexibility of requiring approvals in certain situations and having them manually turned on in others.

You then need to define by Role who you need to be a finance approver and super approver for your company. Invoices can be assigned directly to a person with the Finance Approval role or they can be left blank and any person with the Finance Approval role can approve the invoice. You can create or assign a role to be a super approver. A super approver has the right to bypass any approval process and move vendor invoice through to payment. A super approver can approve invoices for others or they can remove the approval requirement from an invoice.

Invoices that are part of the approval process will be placed On Hold when entered. When the levels of approval assigned to the invoice have been satisfied, the On Hold status of the vendor invoice will be removed. Unapproved invoices cannot be taken off hold in Vendor Payments.

WIP associated with invoices that are part of the approval process and are unpaid are restricted from certain edits in Manage > Client Invoices. Changing the project, phase, or activity, or selecting to split transactions in Client Invoices are not supported if you are using Vendor Invoice Approvals. These types of changes need to made directly on the vendor invoice in Manage > Vendor Invoices.

When working in Manage > Vendor Invoice Approvals, you can filter the vendor invoice list to include or exclude any invoices you do not want to see. Ajera remembers the filters you have applied and saves them to your user preferences so that they are still applied the next time to log in to Ajera.

Once vendor invoice approvals is enabled, you can mark new or existing unpaid invoices to require approval in Manage > Vendor Invoices.

Overview of the Vendor Approval Setup and Workflow

 

Manage > Vendor Invoices Changes

When you open vendor invoices, you will see two new check boxes, PM Approval Required and Finance Approval Required, and a field to assign a finance approver for the vendor invoice.

When invoice approvals are enabled and you have defined a threshold amount, the PM Approval Required and/or Finance Approval Required check boxes will be checked automatically upon saving if the invoice amount exceeds the defined threshold amount.

Getting to Know the Interface

The available options, tabs, and Action menu options available can vary depending on your role.

1. The Vendor Invoice List

Use the vendor invoice list to select invoices to approve or reject.

2. The Vendor Invoice Detail

Use the vendor invoice detail section to view more information about the vendor invoice including vendor invoice number, invoice amount, the date the invoice needs to be paid, and notes.

3. Approvals Tabs

Use these tabs to switch between your approvals and all approvals.

4. Approve and Reject Buttons

Use these buttons to Approve, Unapprove, Reject, and/or Unreject vendor invoices.

5. The Actions column

Use the Actions column to open vendor invoices in ClickOnce, view and add attachments, view approval history, and add approval notes.

The Actions available are:

  • Open Vendor Invoice: This launches the ClickOnce Manage Vendor Invoices window.

  • Attachments: This opens the Attachments dialog box where you can view and add invoice attachments.

  • View Approval History: This opens the Approvals History dialog box where the invoice approval history is displayed.

  • Add Approval Notes: This opens the Add Notes dialog box where you can add approval notes.

6. Optional Columns

Use the to add optional columns to the Vendor Invoice List and Vendor Invoice Detail sections.