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- Accounts Payable Automation
- Features
- Approvals and disputes
Approvals and disputes
Approvals and disputes keeps the decision on a bill separate from its preparation. Route the amount to the appropriate approval tier, retain the decision and give rejected or mismatched bills a visible follow-up path. The AP team can distinguish work awaiting an approver from work requiring a supplier correction.
OverviewMy Pending Approvals×
Accounts Payable Automation · Approvals and disputes
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My Pending Approvals
Bill approval steps
| Bill number | Vendor | Total | Department | Project code | Assigned at | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BAS-23732 | Cedarline Industrial Supply | 9,409.45 | Operations | BAS-87172 | 24 Oct | |
| BAS-69738 | Harborfield Office Goods | 32,892.48 | Facilities | BAS-54420 | 30 Oct | |
| BAS-12037 | Westmere Freight Services | 36,909.40 | Finance | BAS-88845 | 25 Oct | |
| BAS-78112 | Pine Hollow Maintenance | 9,111.09 | Customer Support | BAS-31264 | 25 Oct | |
| BAS-21262 | Northgate Packaging Works | 24,329.56 | Warehouse | BAS-35616 | 30 Oct |
6 of 6 records
Cedarline Industrial SupplyBill approval steps · BAS-23732
Total9,409.45
DepartmentOperations
Project codeBAS-87172
Assigned at24 Oct
Due date26 Oct
What you can do
Route by the applicable authority
Bill approval matrix describes amount bands, required roles, department scope and sequence. Bill approval steps record the assigned person, decision, time and notes for each required stage. The Approver decides within the assigned department or project; the AP Manager and Controller / CFO handle their configured tiers. Seeing a bill in a queue is not permission to approve it.
A low-value automatic tier is an explicit policy choice, not a general shortcut. It applies only when the configured conditions are met. Higher bands keep the required human decision, and delegated work retains the actual actor and the scope of delegation. Changing a bill’s amount after review requires the decision basis to be checked again rather than retaining stale approval evidence.
Make the reason visible
A rejected approval or a three-way mismatch creates a dispute with the bill, vendor, reason and assigned owner. Disputes distinguishes open work, vendor review, a credit being awaited and a completed resolution. The AP Manager can follow the next action without marking the bill approved merely to clear it from an operational queue.
Resolution can mean a vendor credit, voiding a bill, replacing it with a corrected invoice or documenting why no credit is due. Record the actual resolution and the supporting correspondence. If the bill needs a renewed decision, send it back through that route. A supplier promise to send a credit is not the same as a received credit with an available balance.
Apply credits without losing the trail
Vendor credits preserve the supplier credit number, original bill or dispute, amount, applied amount and remaining balance. An application reduces the eligible obligation once and remains traceable to the source credit. Partial applications leave a visible remainder. A credit should not be counted both as a reduction in the invoice and as an additional payment discount.
The bill’s approval result can request a draft journal in the connected general ledger. AP retains that journal reference and waits for the ledger’s actual posting result. Invoice approval, accounting posting and bank payment remain distinct outcomes. Keeping them separate helps reviewers locate an exception without treating one successful step as proof that the entire transaction completed.
What your team sees
- My Pending Approvals. Review the underlying records within your permitted scope.
- Open Disputes. Review the underlying records within your permitted scope.
What it keeps track of
Data model- Bill approval matrix
- The tiered approval ladder — amount band to required approver role. Multiple bands stack; routing walks them in order.
- Bill approval steps
- Audit trail — one row per required approval step per Bill, with the approver’s decision.
- Bills
- Vendor bill header. The center-of-gravity table. Lifecycle: Draft → pending match → pending approval → Approved → partially paid / Paid / Voided / Disputed.
- Disputes
- Bills under dispute — three-way mismatch, vendor-billing error, quality issue, duplicate-bill flag. Tracked through to resolution with a vendor credits or bill status: Voided outcome.
- Vendor credits
- Credit memos issued by a vendor — applied against open Bills or banked for future use.
- Bill attachments
- Attached documents — vendor invoice PDF, supporting docs, OCR source file, contract reference, dispute correspondence. Multiple per Bill.
Who uses it
Permissions- Approver
- Decides own-scope bills.
- AP Manager
- Manages mid-tier decisions and supplier disputes.
- Controller / CFO
- Handles higher authority and financial release.
- AP Clerk
- Supplies the evidence and corrections.
- Admin
- Maintains the routing configuration.
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