Approving Accounts Payable Documents
In most companies, approval of vendor bills and payments to vendors by the designated employees is required before the documents are processed in the accounting systems and paid. Approvals are used, for example, to prevent double-payments of bills or payments for inaccurate or fraudulent bills.
In MYOB Advanced you can configure approval workflow for the following types of AP documents: Bill, Credit Adjustment, Debit Adjustment, Payment, Cash Purchase, Prepayment Request, and Prepayment.
The process of approving a vendor document can be performed by one person only or by multiple persons, depending on the company policy. When multiple persons are designated to approve a document, they can approve it either in parallel (the documents are reviewed by multiple approvers at the same time) or in multiple successive stages (that is, once one employee has approved the document, it becomes available for approval by the next employee).
In this topic, you will read about setting up approval workflow for AP documents and processing documents with approval required.
Approval Workflows
In some companies, authorized employees approve AP bills for payment before other users can pay these bills. With this capability set up, all released bills are available for payment only after they are approved by an authorized person. The approval is performed by using a specific form to which you should restrict access for all other employees except the authorized ones. For details, see Bill Approval for Payment.
MYOB Advanced offers easy-to-use, system-wide capabilities for configuring approval workflows for multiple types of documents. To make it possible to use the capability, you enable the Approval Workflow feature on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.
With the feature enabled, you can configure an approval workflow with the needed complexity, which can be any of the following:
- Single-stage approval: One authorized employee approves documents for payment or release.
- Multistage approval: Multiple employees approve documents in a fixed order (the next approver receives a document only when the previous one has approved it).
- Parallel approval: Multiple employees approve documents in any order or simultaneously.
By using the Approval Workflow feature, you can configure an approval workflow for the following documents as described in the noted topics.
| Document Type | Topic with Details |
|---|---|
| Expense receipts | Expense Receipt Approval |
| Expense claims | Expense Claim Approval |
| Cash transactions | Cash Transaction Approval |
| Accounts payable documents | Approving Accounts Payable Documents |
| Accounts receivable documents | Approval of Accounts Receivable Documents |
| Sales orders | Sales Order Approval |
| Purchase orders | Purchase Order Approval |
| Purchase requests and requisitions | Managing Assignment and Approval Maps |
Configuration of the Approval Workflow
Before you proceed with enabling approval, make sure that needed approval maps and notification templates (if needed) have been configured, as described in Managing Assignment and Approval Maps. The approval map defines the employees designated for approving AP documents and the conditions that AP documents must match to be assigned for approval; the template of the notification email will be used by the system for notifying approvers about the documents pending their approval. You need to configure both the approval map and the notification template before you start to set up the approval process on the Accounts Payable Preferences (AP101000) form.
You enable the approval process of AP documents on the Approval tab of the Accounts Payable Preferences form. On this form, for each document type, you specify an approval map or multiple maps and, optionally, the template of the notification email. Then you enable the configured approval workflow by selecting the Active check box for each combination of a document type and approval map.
Once you have set up the approval process, AP documents that meet the conditions for approval cannot be released until they are approved by the assigned approvers. For step-by-step instructions, see To Set Up Approval of Accounts Payable Documents.
Processing of AP Documents with Approvals Set Up
With approvals set up, when an AP document that is subject to approval is created, saved, and taken off hold, it gets the Pending Approval status. The responsible approver receives an email notification (if an email notification template is specified for this approval process) about the document pending his or her approval. On the Approvals (EP503010) form, an approver can review the list of documents pending approval, and can select one record or multiple records in the list and approve them.
To reject a document, the approver needs to open it on the corresponding data entry form by clicking the document reference number in the list. The approver can also approve or reject the document directly on the corresponding data entry form, if needed. For example, individual vendor bills can be approved or rejected by an authorized person on the Bills and Adjustments (AP301000) form.
You can edit or delete an AP document with approval set up (such as an approved document, a rejected document, or a document that was not approved because of the specific conditions defined in the approval map). To do this, you need to put this document on hold. If you edit the document, the process of approval starts again once you take it off hold.
You can view the detailed approval information for each particular AP document on the Approvals tab of the corresponding data entry form. On this tab, you can view to whom the document was assigned, who actually approved the bill, and when approval was granted.