INVOICE APPROVAL & APPROVAL WORKFLOW

Invoice approval
that fits your company

Every invoice your company pays should have been checked first. Usually that fails not for lack of will but on the route: approvals run by email, and afterwards nobody knows who agreed when. In COMMITLY Bills the approval sits right on the invoice — with rules you set once.
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One company, several approval routes

One company, several approval routes

One rule for the whole company rarely fits. Marketing approves differently from IT, and management has limits of its own. So in COMMITLY two things decide who has to agree:

  • The label on the invoice picks the policy — marketing, IT or operations, say.
  • The amount picks the step within that policy.
  • What a label means is up to you. Usually it is the department.

That way you run as many approval routes side by side as your company has areas.

Thresholds per area — and who signs off from when

Thresholds per area — and who signs off from when

An example for three areas:

  • Marketing: up to €1,000 the head of marketing, above that the CFO as well
  • IT: up to €500 the system administrator, above that the CTO
  • Operations: up to €200 office management, above that the COO

Whoever uploads the invoice needs to know none of these rules. They set the label — the policy does the rest. Start with three to five policies; in most companies that covers the bulk of invoices.

What it comes down to

Authorisation

Who may approve what, from which amount? The answer sits in a policy: thresholds, people or roles, the number of approvals required.

Verification

Is the invoice right, was the service delivered? The person responsible checks the pre-filled fields and adds what is missing. Only then does it move on.

Evidence

Who decided when? Every step is recorded with person and timestamp — and attached behind the invoice on export, in the same file.

Separating duties — what the system does, what you set

Separating duties — what the system does, what you set

A critical payment should not be created, checked and approved by one person alone. In COMMITLY that is three steps:

  • Capture: upload it or email it to the invoice mailbox
  • Check: the person responsible reviews the invoice and passes it on
  • Approve: according to the policy in place — no approval, no payment

To be honest: COMMITLY does not enforce that submitter and approver are different people. You set that through roles and policies. And without an active policy an invoice goes straight to payment. More in the article on the four-eyes principle.

Setting it up in three steps

Step 01

Define labels by responsibility

The label triggers the policy. So it names the area, not the item: marketing, IT, operations, management. “Laptop” or “trade fair” gets you nowhere — no approver follows from it.

Step 02

Set up the approval matrix

Each label gets a policy with thresholds. Start with the three areas where most of the money moves. Once an approval is under way, later changes no longer touch it.

Step 03

Decide on the special cases

Direct debit and PayPal: the money is gone before anyone could agree. Those invoices still go through the process, get checked and are marked as already paid. Company cards work differently: the approval is the card itself — limit and owner — and you photograph the receipt in the COMMITLY Spend app.

Invoice and approval log in one file

Invoice and approval log in one file

For every invoice COMMITLY keeps an activity list: who did what and when, with the value before and after for changes. These entries cannot be deleted. On export that becomes one PDF per invoice:

  • the original document first
  • then supplier, invoice number, amount, submitter, approver and the policy
  • and finally the complete activity list

Invoice and evidence cannot be separated by accident. The export to DATEV takes the approval log with it. What it is not: an audit-proof archive. The copy you must retain lives in your accounting system — COMMITLY provides the stage before it, from incoming invoice processing to the handover.

Checklist for your company

What you settle alongside the software

Software alone does not create compliance. These points you set yourself — and write down, because that is exactly what an auditor asks for.

Users and roles

Process discipline

Special cases

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Questions about invoice approval

Invoice approval is the step between arrival and payment: someone authorised confirms that the service was delivered and may be paid. Usually thresholds hang off it — the higher the amount, the more approvals.