Bill approval workflows can be updated at any time to reflect changes in your business needs. This guide walks you through how to edit an existing bill approval workflow in your account.
To learn how to create a bill approval workflow, please see the following guide.
How to edit a bill approval workflow
Important Note:
- Plan eligibility: This is a premium feature available for Core and above subscribers. If you are a Go subscriber, you need to upgrade your plan.
- Retroactivity: Changes apply to future bills only. Bills currently pending approval retain their pending status; bills already approved or declined are not affected by edits to the workflow.
- Self-approval: To maintain security, a user cannot approve a bill they created themselves, to enforce separation of duties between the person creating the bill and the approver.
- Admin/Owner exemption: If a workflow is based only on Amount or Vendor criteria, it will only apply to Accountants and Contributors. To require approval for bills created by an Owner or Admin, you must explicitly select them (either as specific users or by selecting the "Owner" or "Admin" role) under the relevant criteria.
- Existing bills: Bills created before setting up the approval workflow won't require approval.
1- Sign in to your account.
2- Select Settings from the bottom left of the screen.
3- Under the Company section, select Approval workflows.
Alternatively, you can open the Approvals tab and select Manage workflows.
4- Under the Approval workflows section, you will find the existing bill approval workflows and the existing payment approval workflows. Scroll down to find the bill approval workflow you want to edit and select the three dots icon.
5- Select Edit workflow from the dropdown list.
6- Make the necessary edits. You can set the bill approval according to bill amount, bill creator, or bill vendor.
- Setting bill approval according to bill amount
This allows you to set bill approval for when a bill is a certain amount.
a. Select Bill amount is from the dropdown list.
b. Choose either More than or equal to or Less than or equal to from the dropdown list.
c. Enter the amount.
- Setting bill approval according to bill creator
This allows you to set bill approval for when a bill is created by a specific person.
a. Select Bill creator is from the dropdown list.
b. Choose either Specific users or Specific roles from the dropdown list.
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 bill approval according to bill vendor
This allows you to set bill approval for when a bill is sent to a specific vendor.
a. Select Bill vendor is from the dropdown list.
b. Check the box next to the vendor/s you would like to set.
7- To set more than one condition, select + Add condition. For example, you can require approval for bills over a certain amount created by a specific user.
You can combine up to three conditions within a single workflow to further refine your approval process.
8- To delete a condition, select the Delete icon next to the condition you would like to remove.
9- Under Then do this, choose who needs to approve the bill. The chosen team members will be notified whenever there is a bill waiting for their approval.
- Any approvers:
a. Select Any approvers from the first dropdown list.
b. Use the next dropdown list to select the number of approvers required.Depending on the number of users, this can include either anyone, any two, or any three.
- Specific approvers:
a. Select Specific approvers from the first dropdown list.
b. Check the box next to the selected approvers. You can select up to 3 approvers per step.
c. To add an additional level of approvers, select + Add step.
You can combine up to three steps within a single workflow to further refine your approval process.
d. Select an additional approver from the dropdown list.
10- Once your workflow is set up, select Save workflow.
11 - In the confirmation pop-up, select Confirm changes to finish.
That's it! You successfully edited the bill approval workflow. The updated workflow will apply to any new bills that match the workflow's conditions.
If the only eligible approver assigned to a workflow is removed from your account, the workflow will be automatically deleted. Bills pending approval at that point retain their pending status until manually resubmitted.