There may be scenarios in which you’ll want an invoice or payment to go through an approval process with multiple team members before it’s authorized. Settle allows you to define two types of approval workflows:

  • Invoice-specific approvals (tied to an individual invoice), to ensure the legitimacy of an invoice awaiting payment — jump to Setting up an approval flow for a specific invoice.

  • Global approval rules (applied to all payments based on defined criteria), to provide visibility and control to those monitoring accounting and the movement of money within your organization — jump to Defining a global approval rule.

Note: Approval workflows are available exclusively on accounts with Pro, Premium, and Enterprise subscriptions.


Setting up an approval flow for a specific invoice

  1. Login to your Settle account and either upload a new invoice, or navigate to the desired invoice by selecting Unscheduled under Accounts payable in the lefthand navigation menu.

  2. Select the invoice, then select the Request approval icon at the top of the invoice screen.

3. Follow the prompts to select your approval criteria, then select Request approval to initiate the approval process.

4. Once sent for approval, you’ll be able to track the status of your invoice with the status indicators, and by checking the audit trail for an invoice.

Tip

You can assign the same approval flow to multiple invoices at once by navigating to the Unscheduled page and hovering your mouse over the yellow page icon until you see a checkbox appear. Select multiple invoices by checking their boxes, then select the Request approval icon at the top of the screen. Only invoices with both a vendor and invoice amount filled in will be included in this bulk action.


Defining a global approval rule

  1. Log in to your Settle account and navigate to Settings > Rules. Select Add new rule.

  2. Add a descriptive name for your new rule.

  3. Follow the prompts on screen to define your invoice limits and approval rules. You can define approval conditions based on

    1. Dollar amount of the payment

    2. The payment request submitter

    3. The receiving vendor

  4. Steps can be defined sequentially by selecting Add approval step, and steps can be deleted by clicking on the trashcan icon next to each step.

  5. Remember to select Save rule when you're done.

Tip

If you want to require all invoices to follow a certain rule, set the conditional Amount value to $0.

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