Make your business more efficient by sharing responsibilities with your team while still maintaining control over payment approval. Payment approval workflows allow all team members to make payments, but certain payments will need to be approved by the relevant team member before being scheduled. You have full control over the specific payments that require approval.
The approval workflow can only be created when there is more than one user who has access to your company account.
This guide covers all the essentials to successfully create and manage approval workflows. It contains the following sections:
- Available criteria for approval workflows
- Setting up approval workflows from the Approvals tab
- Setting up approval workflows from the Settings
- How to add an approval workflow
- How to edit an approval workflow
- How to delete an approval workflow
Available criteria for approval workflows
Bill Manager offers flexible criteria to create efficient approval workflows that fit your business needs. You can set up approval workflows based on:
- Payment amount
- Payment scheduler (team member)
- Vendor
- Single or multiple approvers
- Specific approvers
- Multi-level approvers
Here's a breakdown of each criterion:
- Payment amount: You can require approval for payments that are more than or equal to a certain amount, or less than or equal to that amount.
- Payment scheduler: Set the approval workflow to apply to a specific user or a specific role on your team who schedules the payment.
- Vendor: Choose one or more vendors for whom payments will require approval.
- Single or multiple approvers: Choose how many approvers are needed. You can require approval from one, two, or three approvers.
- Specific approvers: Choose which team member needs to approve the payment. You can select up to three approvers.
- Multi-level approvers: If multiple approvers are required, you can specify the approval hierarchy by adding up to three levels of approval.
Setting up approval workflows from the Approvals tab
1- Sign in to your account.
2- In the Pay Bills dashboard, select the Approvals tab. The account owner and all admins in a company will see an Approvals tab with payments that require approval.
3- If you don't have any payments to approve, select Manage workflows at the center of your screen.
4- If you already have payments to approve, set up an approval workflow by selecting Manage approval workflows in the top right corner.
5- You'll be taken to Settings. On the right side of your screen, select + Add workflow.
Proceed to the How to add an approval workflow section of this guide to learn more.
Setting up approval workflows from the Settings
1- Sign in to your account.
2-Select Settings from the top of the screen.
3- Under the Company section, select Approval workflows.
4- In Payment approval workflows on the right side of your screen, select + Add workflow.
How to add an approval workflow
1- On the Add a payment approval workflow page, set the criteria for when a payment requires approval. You can set it per amount, per scheduler, and/or per vendor.
Setting the conditions
2- Next, under When this happens, choose which condition will trigger approval. You can do this by selecting a condition in the dropdown menu. Here are instructions on setting the different conditions:
- Setting approval according to the amount
This allows you to set payment approval for when a payment is a certain amount.
a. Select Payment amount is from the dropdown list.
b. Choose from the dropdown list: either More than or equal to or Less than or equal to.
c. Enter the amount.
- Setting the approval according to who scheduled the payment
This allows you to set payment approval for when a payment is scheduled by a specific person.
a. Select Payment scheduler is from the dropdown list.
b. Choose from the dropdown list: either Specific users or Specific roles.
c. For specific users, check the box next to the selected user name/s.
d. For specific roles, choose which role/s this will apply to.
- Setting the approval according to which vendor would receive the payment
This allows you to set payment approval for when a payment is sent to a specific vendor.
a. Select Vendor is from the dropdown list.
b. Check the box next to the vendor/s you would like to set.
c. You can set more than one condition by selecting + Add condition. For example, you can require approval for payments over a certain amount made by a specific user.
d. To delete a condition, select the Delete icon next to the condition you would like to remove.
Setting the approvers
5- Under Then do this, choose who needs to approve the payment. The chosen users (team members) will be notified whenever there is an approval they will need to make. Here are the kinds of approvers you can add:
- Any approvers:
a. Select Any approvers from the first dropdown list.
b. Next, use the next dropdown list to choose if the payment requires approval from 1, 2, or 3 approvers.
- Specific approvers:
a. Select Specific approvers from the first dropdown list.
b. Check the box next to the selected admins. You can select up to 3 approvers.
c. To add an additional level of approvers, select + Add step.
d. Select an additional approver from the dropdown list.
6- Once your workflow is set up, select Save workflow at the bottom of the dashboard.
7- A confirmation pop-up will appear. Select Got it.
That's it! The new workflow will appear in the Payment approval workflows section. You can set up as many approval workflows as you need.
How to edit an approval workflow
1- Sign in to your account.
2- Select Settings from the top of the screen.
Alternatively, you can open the Approvals tab and select Manage approval workflows.
3- Under the Company section, select Approval workflows.
4- Find the workflow you want to edit and select the three dots icon.
5- Select Edit workflow from the dropdown list.
6- Make the necessary edits.
7- Select Save workflow.
8- In the confirmation pop-up, select Confirm changes to finish.
That's it! You successfully edited the approval workflow.
How to delete an approval workflow
1- Select the Settings icon at the top right of the dashboard.
Alternatively, you can open the Approvals tab and select Manage approval workflows.
2- Under the Company section, select Approval workflows.
3- Find the workflow you want to delete and select the three dots icon.
4- Select Delete workflow from the dropdown list.
5- In the confirmation pop-up, select Delete workflow to finish.
After the approval workflow deletion, any existing payments awaiting approval will now proceed without approval.
That's it! You successfully deleted the approval workflow.