Overview
AccountsIQ's new workflow approval engine streamlines financial processes by automating approval workflows. Approvals can be managed for key transactions, such as purchase orders and invoices, both through a web platform and a mobile app.
The system is highly customizable, enabling organizations to set up workflows with pre-defined rules and hierarchies, ensuring compliance with governance policies, requirements, and budget constraints. Additionally, the platform offers efficiency when tracking approval status making the workflows more efficient and easier to monitor.
Workflows are configured under Approval Settings, workflows are managed under Workflow Listing, and approvers are managed under Approvers Listing:
The moment a Purchase Order, PO Invoice, or Non-PO invoice is created, it is picked up by the applicable workflow setup and routed to the assigned approvers across different hierarchy levels for their approval or rejection.
The system’s approval workflow offers flexible configuration options to suit your organization’s requirements. You can:
- Define what documents to process
- Set an automatic approval threshold
- Set up re-submission rules
- Single or multi-level approval hierarchy
- Set up Approval Rules
- Single or Multi-user approval
- Define decision modes
- Manual approval selection
Organizations can create as many workflows as needed to suit their approval processes.
The new WFA will not impact the AP Inbox and can be used with third-party systems such as OCR and Project Management systems.
Info: Price Plans
If you are on the AIQ1 price plan, you can only create one level of approval. If you would like to upgrade, please contact your customer success manager.
Designing your automated approval process
The new approval engine is a powerful and flexible tool. Before getting started with the setup, decide as a company how you want the approval process to work, and build from that plan.
When designing your approval processes, take into consideration:
- What type of purchases do you currently have? Are they specific to departments, locations or projects?
- Who needs to sign off on specific types of purchases (e.g. capital assets, legal invoices, etc.) or approve certain expenses?
- Do you have a minimum threshold for approvals?
- Will single step approval be sufficient in all cases? Or will some purchases require multi-step approvals?
- Do you maintain budgets in the system, and do you want budget holders to receive information on the budget spend?
When it comes to setting up your workflows also think about the composition of your orders and/or invoices. For example:
Invoice |
Workflow |
|---|---|
A single department/location/project invoice |
Create a workflow for a single department/location/or project |
Multi department/location/project invoice |
Create a workflow for the same multi- departments/locations/projects |
Capital Expenditure multi-department related invoices |
Create a CAPEX multi department workflow using GL code rules |
Employee Expense Invoices |
Create a designated employee expense workflow using Non PO Invoice process |
Remember: Every document type = one workflow
Always ensure there is correlation between the documents that require approval and your workflows. Refer to Workflow Scenarios - Beta for more examples.
Pre-Requisites
User Types
All Approvers must be set up as system users, including those who are only business users.
All current non-system approvers using the legacy workflow approval will automatically be converted to system users. This conversion will be triggered as soon as the Approval Settings is saved.
User Permissions
To use the features referred to in this article, in the Maintain Menu Profiles screen, assign the following permission to the relevant profiles:
- Approval Settings
- Approvers Listing
- Add/Edit Approvers
- Workflows Listing
- Add/Edit Workflows
For more on user profiles, see Setting Up System Users.
Configuring the new WFA Settings
Navigate to Setup > Approval Settings.
First, choose the type of document you want to enable approval for:
- Purchase Orders
- Purchase Invoices
- Both Purchase Orders and Purchase Invoices
If your organization only requires approval for Purchase Orders and not Invoices, the setting Purchase Orders lets you create workflows for Purchase Orders only:
If your organization only requires approval for Purchase Invoices and not Purchase Orders, the setting Purchase Invoices will let you create workflows for Non PO Invoices only:
And if your organization approves both Purchase Orders and PO Invoices and requires a secondary approval on PO invoices in addition to the PO Approval, enabling both the Purchase Orders and Purchase Invoices processes will provide that extra level of control. In this case, you can create approval workflows for your Purchase Orders, PO Invoices, and if needed Non-PO Invoices:
This setup by default enables the Require exact matching option, which restricts the creation of a PO Invoice if it differs from the original approved Purchase Order. To create the PO Invoice, update the Purchase Order first to the exact PO Invoice value, re-send for approval and then create the PO Invoice.
If disabled, the PO Invoice can be created if the value is different to the approved PO, however you can still control the PO Invoice creation by adding tolerance values within the workflow (see the Re-approval rules for edits section).
Next decide if you want to Re-approve documents from integrated products. This means that documents that were potentially approved in a third-party system will enter an approval workflow.
Finally, enter the Workflow Approval Administrator’s email address to notify them of any pending actions on documents needing their attention. Click Save.
Creating & Managing Approvers
Creating Approvers
- Navigate to Approval Workflow > Approvers and click New Approver.
- Select an Approver (approvers must be set up as system users first to appear on the list).
- Tick the checkbox if the approver is a budget holder. Approvers flagged as Budget Holders will receive a different approval email template containing details of the budget line.
- Assign a substitute approver if needed. Substitute approvers approve documents in place of the primary approver during specific dates, such as for annual or sick leave. If the substitute approver does not approve the document within the designated dates, it will need to be re-sent to the original approver for approval. Substitute approvers must be set up as approvers first to appear in the list. Note that if an approver regularly approves documents on behalf of someone else, they should be set up as part of the workflow.
- Enable Send approval requests by Email/Mobile if the approver should be notified via email, and/ or via the Mobile app.
- If applicable, activate if approver can approve their own documents. (There will be a drop down to select a designated approver if the primary approver can approve their own documents.)
-
Save.
Managing Approvers
Manage approvers in the Approvers listing grid. Refine your search using filters and search fields and export details as an Excel report.
The Actions dropdown lets you manage approvers as follows:
- Edit: All approver details can be edited except their name and email.
- Deactivate: Approvers cannot be deleted if any of their associated workflows have been used. Instead, they can be deactivated.
- Show associated workflows: This will take you to the Workflow screen, showing just the workflows associated with the selected approver.
Creating Workflows
Workflows are created based on the types of documents your organization approves. As well as factors like whether the workflow involves single or multiple departments, requires one or several approvers, involves different hierarchy levels, and any specific conditions or rules tied to the approval of Purchase Orders and/or Invoices. Before you begin, refer to section 2, "Designing your automated approval process," for guidance on creating workflows.
Creating Approval Workflows for Purchase Orders
If your organization only approves Purchase Orders and not Invoices, only enable Purchase Orders in the Approval Settings. This ensures that only Purchase Orders will be sent for approval. 
Setting up the workflow
- Navigate to Approval Workflow > Workflows.
- Click on New Workflow.
- Complete the following:
- Workflow - Enter a unique workflow name.
- Process – Specifies the type of document the workflow will handle. By default, only Purchase Orders are shown based on the configuration in Approval Settings.
-
Auto-approval - Enable this option if your organization automatically approves Purchase Orders up to a specified value and enter that value here.
Setting up Approval Steps for POs
Approval Steps let you create multiple levels of approval, allowing you to add multiple approvers at each level. For example:
- Level 1: Biology and Chemistry Department Managers approve POs under £1K
- Level 2: Finance Manager approves POs between £500 to £10K
- Level 3: CFO approves POs over £5K
In this scenario, set up both department managers in Step 1, the Finance Manager in Step2 and the CFO in Step 3.
Alternatively, if your approvers all have approval limits that are exclusive from each other, you can set them up as one level. For example, department managers could approve under £1K, finance managers above £1K and below £5K, and the CFO above £5K.
- Click on Add a Step to create the first level of approval.
- Approve based on enhances operational efficiency by directing documents to the right approvers according to specific conditions. You can use multiple conditions from the available options. For instance, if your approval process requires all department heads to approve their own department’s expenses, you could use BI or Dimension codes to identify each department and assign the relevant approvers. This ensures expenses are routed correctly at every approval level. If the approval level is intended to approve any purchase order, do not apply any conditions.
- Select the approver from the dropdown.
- Enter the approvers limits or elect the check box with label “No limit” for Unlimited. Only Purchase Orders within these limits will be sent to the approver.
- Fill in all fields and use the Include or Exclude options to set your conditions. For example, if you want to include all BI codes except two, choose “Exclude” and add those two codes. If the rule applies only to one BI code, select “Include” and add the code. Make sure that any documents set to be excluded, are included in another workflow to ensure they are not missed in your approval process.
- Click Add New to include more approvers at this level.
- When more than one approver is setup, select the corresponding Decision Mode. If you want to approve multi-line multi-departmental documents, select “All approvers must approve if limits apply.” Only select “Any can approve” if multiple approvers are linked to the same department. The last option “Select when processing the document” requires users to manually choose an approver for processing an order.
- When done, click on Save.
- Click Add a step to add the next level of approval. Repeat the process until all required approval levels are set up in the workflow. If the same approver is assigned to more than one step, you can configure whether their approval or rejection should be applied to the current step or all steps at once.
- Create Re-approval rules for edits. If a Purchase Order is changed after approval, set the tolerance value to define by how much it can be edited without having to go through the approval process again. Set up tolerance values as a net amount, gross amount, or percentage.
- After creating the workflow, click Save. It will appear as a ‘Draft’ in the Workflow listing.
- If you are ready to start processing Purchase Orders through this workflow, click on Activate.
WFA Migration
Note! Activating the very first workflow triggers the activation of the new WFA engine and disables the legacy workflow approval engine. This results in the following:
- The Approver setup tab will get renamed to Bulk Payments Approver.
- In Company Details & Settings, Purchase Approval Settings will disappear. Batch Payment Settings will remain until they are migrated later.
If you are a customer using the legacy workflow approval engine, refer to section 9 Migration process for more information on the migration. 
Creating Approval Workflows for Non PO Invoices
If your organization only approves Purchase Invoices and not Purchase Orders, only enable Purchase Invoice in the Approval Settings. This ensures that only Purchase Invoices will be sent for approval, and not the Purchase Invoices linked to the Purchase Orders.
Additionally, enable this setting, if employee expenses require approval.
Setting up the workflow
- Navigate to Approval Workflow > Workflows.
- Click on New Workflow and complete the following:
- Workflow - Enter a unique workflow name.
- Process – Specifies the type of document the workflow will handle. By default, only Non PO Invoice appears based on the configuration in Approval Settings.
-
Auto-approval - Enable this option if your organization automatically approves non-PO Invoices up to a specified value and enter that value here.
Setting up Approval Steps for Non PO Invoices
Approval Steps let you create multiple levels of approval, allowing you to add multiple approvers at each level. For example:
- Level 1: Biology and Chemistry Department Managers approve POs under £1K
- Level 2: Finance Manager approves POs between £500 to £10K
- Level 3: CFO approves POs over £5K
In this scenario, set up both department managers in Step 1, the Finance Manager in Step2 and the CFO in Step 3.
Alternatively, if your approvers all have approval limits that are exclusive from each other, you can set them up as one level. For example, department managers could approve under £1K, finance managers above £1K and below £5K, and the CFO above £5K.
- Click on Add a Step to create the first level of approval.
- Approve based on enhances operational efficiency by directing documents to the right approvers according to specific conditions. You can use multiple conditions from the available options. For instance, if your approval process requires all department heads to approve their own department’s expenses, you could use BI or Dimension codes to identify each department and assign the relevant approvers. This ensures expenses are routed correctly at every approval level. If the approval level is intended to approve any Non-PO Invoice, do not apply any conditions. The Non-PO Invoice workflow also includes the ‘Employee’ approve based on condition, allowing you to create an approval workflow for employee expenses. After selecting an approver and setting the limits, the list of employee accounts will display, based on the default settings in the Employee account under Expense Claim Approver.
- Select the approver from the dropdown.
- Enter the approvers limits or select Unlimited. Only non-PO invoices within these limits will be sent to the approver.
- Fill in all fields and use the Include or Exclude options to build your conditions. For example, if you want to include all BI codes except two, choose “Exclude” and add those two codes. If the rule applies only to one BI code, select ‘Include’ and add the code. Make sure that any documents set to be excluded, are included in another workflow to ensure they are not missed in your approval process.
- Click Add New to include more approvers at this level.
- When more than one approver is setup, select the corresponding Decision Mode. If you want to approve multi-line multi-departmental documents, select “All approvers must approve if limits apply.” Only select “Any can approve” if multiple approvers are linked to the same department. The last option “Select when processing the document” requires users to manually choose an approver for processing a non-PO invoice.
- When done, click on Save.
- Click Add a step to add the next level of approval. Repeat the process until all required approval levels are set up in the workflow. If the same approver is assigned to more than one step, you can configure if their approval or rejection should be applied to the current step or all steps at once.
- Create Re-approval rules for edits. If a Non-PO Invoice is changed after approval, set the tolerance value to define by how much it can be edited without having to go through the approval process again. Set up tolerance values as a net amount, gross amount, or percentage.
- After creating the workflow click Save. It will appear as a ‘Draft’ in the Workflow listing.
- If you are ready to start processing non-PO Invoices through this workflow, click on Activate.
WFA Migration
Note! Activating the very first workflow triggers the activation of the new WFA engine and disables the legacy workflow approval engine. This results in the following:
- The Approver setup tab will get renamed to Bulk Payments Approver.
- In Company Details & Settings, Purchase Approval Settings will disappear. Batch Payment Settings will remain until they are migrated later.
If you are a customer using the legacy workflow approval engine, refer to section 9 Migration process for more information on the migration.
Creating Approval Workflows for PO Invoices
The PO Invoice approval process matches PO Invoices with Purchase Orders. If your organization requires an additional level of approval for PO Invoices beyond the Purchase Order Approval process, you would use this process. Enable both Purchase Orders and Purchase Invoices in Approval Settings. This provides you with the flexibility to create workflows for Purchase Orders, PO Invoices and if needed Non PO invoices.
The Require exact matching option in Approval Settings, if enabled, prevents the creation of a PO Invoice if the value differs from the original approved Purchase Order. Users will need to update the Purchase Order value to the exact PO Invoice value, re-send it for approval and then create the PO Invoice.
If disabled, the PO Invoice can be created if the value is different to the approved PO, however you can still control the PO Invoice creation by adding tolerance values within the workflow (Re-approval rules for edits section). This will be covered below.
Setting up the Workflow
When creating PO Invoice workflows, you have two options:
- Create a workflow for your POs with rules to auto approve PO Invoices based on a given tolerance.
- Create a workflow as above and create an additional workflow for PO Invoices with values above the tolerance limits set in the PO workflow. This provides the additional control ensuring all PO Invoices go through an approval workflow process.
Setting up the Workflow for PO’s
- Navigate to Approval Workflow > Workflows.
- Click on New Workflow and complete the following:
- Next setup the hierarchy approval levels through approval steps. Refer to the Setting up Approval Steps for POs section above.
- When done, click on Save. It will appear as a ‘Draft’ in the Workflow listing.
- If you are ready to start processing Purchase Orders through this workflow, click on Activate.
Setting up the Workflow for PO Invoices
- Navigate to Approval Workflow > Workflows.
- Click on New Workflow and complete the following:
If you require an extra level of control where you want PO Invoices above the tolerance values to go through an approval process, then create a separate workflow for PO Invoices, covered below. 
Setting up Approval Steps for PO Invoices
Approval Steps let you create multiple levels of approval, allowing you to add multiple approvers at each level. For example:
- Level 1: Biology and Chemistry Department Managers approve POs under £1K
- Level 2: Finance Manager approves POs between £500 to £10K
- Level 3: CFO approves POs over £5K
In this scenario, set up both department managers in Step 1, the Finance Manager in Step2 and the CFO in Step 3.
Alternatively, if your approvers all have approval limits that are exclusive from each other, you can set them up as one level. For example, department managers could approve under £1K, finance managers above £1K and below £5K, and the CFO above £5K.
- Click on Add a Step to create the first level of approval.
- Approve based on enhances operational efficiency by directing documents to the right approvers according to specific conditions. You can use multiple conditions from the available options. For instance, if your approval process requires all department heads to approve their ow department’s expenses, you could use BI or Dimension codes to identify each department and assign the relevant approvers. This ensures expenses are routed correctly at every approval level. If the approval level is intended to approve any PO Invoice, do not apply any conditions. In this example relating to Capex, the first level of approval requires 2 department heads to approve PO Invoices from a specific supplier. In this case we use GL code and supplier condition to identify these PO invoices and have them routed accordingly.
- Select the approver from the dropdown. Only system users assigned to this entity will appear.
- Enter the approvers limits or select Unlimited. Only PO Invoices within these limits will be sent to the approver.
- Fill in all fields and use the Include or Exclude options to build your conditions. For example, if you want to include all BI codes except two, choose “Exclude” and add those two codes. If the rule applies only to one BI code, select ‘Include’ and add the code. Make sure that any documents set to be excluded, are included in another workflow to ensure they are not missed in your approval process.
- Click Add New to add more approvers to this level.
- When more than one approver is setup, select the corresponding Decision Mode. If you want to approve multi-line multi-departmental documents, select “All approvers must approve if limits apply.” Only select “Any can approve” if multiple approvers are linked to the same department. The last option “Select when processing the document” requires users to manually choose an approver for processing a PO invoice.
- When done, click on Save.
- Click Add a step to add the next level of approval. Repeat the process until all required approval levels are set up in the workflow. If the same approver is assigned to more than one step, you can configure if their approval or rejection should be applied to the current step or all steps at once.
- The Re-approval rules for edits option allows you to set tolerance limits for auto-approving PO invoices tied to previously approved Purchase Orders. If the PO Invoice stays within the tolerance limits, it will be auto-approved. However, if it exceeds the tolerance limits, the original approved PO will need to be sent for re-approval, and then the PO Invoice will need to be created. Set up tolerance values as a net amount, gross amount, or percentage.
- After creating the workflow click on Save. It will appear as a ‘Draft’ status in the Workflow listing.
- If you are ready to start processing PO Invoices through this workflow, click on Activate.
WFA Migration
Note! Activating the very first workflow triggers the activation of the new WFA engine and disables the legacy workflow approval engine. This results in the following:
- The Approver setup tab will get renamed to Bulk Payments Approver.
- In Company Details & Settings, Purchase Approval Settings will disappear. Batch Payment Settings will remain until they are migrated later.
If you are a customer using the legacy workflow approval engine, refer to section 9 Migration process for more information on the migration.
Managing Workflows
The Workflows listing grid lets you do the following:
- All active workflows appear by default in the Workflows screen.
- To view workflows in ‘Draft’ status change the filter to ‘None.’
- Each workflow can be edited, copied, or deactivated via Actions.
- Easily view workflows by document type in the Process column.
Submitting Documents for Approval
Viewing your Document's Approval Status
Once your workflows are complete and at least one is activated, the new workflow engine will initiate. All purchase orders and/or purchase invoices in the system will be picked up by a corresponding workflow based on its setup and document type. The approval status of all documents will display in the Approved status column within the Purchase Order and/or Purchase Invoice listing grids. Note, as each document can have multiple approvers instead of just one, it is no longer possible to display have an Approvers column in the listing grid.
Approval Status in the Purchase Orders listing grid:
Approval Status in the Purchase Item Invoices listing grid:
When a document goes through the approval process, it may go through different approval statuses, depending on the workflow setup. For further details, click on the status link in the grid or on the Notes against each document. The status link displays a useful metro map indicating where the document is within a workflow.
Notifications
Approvers will be notified by email or mobile app. Notifications work as follows:
- If there are multiple approvers in a step and only one approver is required, the other approver/s will receive a message when they go to click on the Approve/ Reject option.
- If you are unsure about whether to Approve/Reject a document, you still must select either option but can leave a note stating your concerns. All notes will appear in the email to all approvers, so the next approver in line will see your note.
- Reminder notifications will be available in the next stage of development.
Meanings of Approval Status
Note, if you are using the legacy WFA engine, and just activated a new workflow in the new WFA engine, the Approved status of all your POs will be updated. Please refer to section 9. Migration process
The new workflow approval engine has the following statuses:
- Pending
- Approved
- Rejected
- Approval Not Required
- Action Required
- Admin Required
- Awaiting Approval
- Cancelled
Additionally, the metro map shows the status of the individual steps:
- Awaiting Approval
- Approved
- Rejected
- Skipped which appears when the value of the document exceeds the limits of the approvers in a step or if an approver cannot approve their own documents.
- Select Approver
Pending
This is the initial status and is used when a newly created document is waiting to be picked up by a workflow.
Approved
The document is fully approved by all steps in the workflow.
Rejected
Documents rejected by the approver and requiring editing.
Approval Not Required
The document will not go for approval if it is below the approval limits set.
Action required
Action required means a document was picked up by a workflow, and a step needs completing or it needs to be resubmitted for approval.
In the example below, the metro map indicates an approver needs to be manually selected. This is an example of a workflow setup as manual approval.
If a document needs to be resubmitted for approval, go to More Actions against the document in the listing grid, and select Re-submit for Approval.
Admin required
Admin required status appears for several reasons, i.e., when multiple workflows are found or when no workflow is found. Hover over Notes to view more details of the error. The WFA administrator must update the workflow accordingly for the document to be processed successfully. Workflow Approval Administrators will be notified via email when their attention is required.
If multiple workflows are found containing the same conditions, flip the rule of the first workflow on its head in the second workflow. For example: the first workflow includes dimension condition: warehouse, and 2nd workflow includes dimension condition: warehouse and supplier: xxx. Therefore, in the first workflow add supplier based on condition and set it to exclude supplier: xxx.
Awaiting Approval
Awaiting Approval means a document is waiting for approval. The metro map displays which approval steps have yet to be approved.
If a step needs to be resubmitted for approval, open the metro map and click Resubmit next to the relevant step.
Cancelled
Cancelled documents will not be picked up by a workflow.
Editing Documents after Approval
If an invoice has been approved, you can still update its GL or BI Code. Whether it then needs reapproval depends on its associated workflow. The PO will go for re-approval:
- If the workflow is set up based on the BI codes - your PO now has a different BI code which is not included in this workflow.
- If you set the re-approval tolerance - the PO is now above the tolerance.
Otherwise, it will not.
Migration process
Migration and Non-System Users
The new WFA engine requires all approvers to be set up as system users. All current non-system approvers will automatically be converted to system users. This conversion will be triggered as soon as the Approval Settings screen is saved.
Non-system approvers will be assigned a new profile ‘External Approver’ with a ‘Business User’ type at entity and group level, with restricted permissions to PO and PI listing screens. They will not receive an email system invite. If the company migrating was using the budget holder approval type, then the new approver will have the ‘Budget holder’ flag enabled the Approvers setup screen. If the new approver was using the mobile app, then the approver will also have a Mobile checkbox ticked under Approval Preferences.
Impacts on Legacy screens
When the Approval Settings screen is saved, the Purchase Approver screen will disappear.
Once the new WFA engine is activated, the legacy WFA setup screen, will no longer exist within the Company Details and Settings screen. Instead, these settings along with additional ones will appear in the Workflow setup screens.
Legacy WFA setup screen before activation of new WFA engine
Legacy WFA setup screen after activation of new WFA engine
In addition, customers using the legacy WFA Supplier type will no longer see the default approver option in the Supplier account settings screen. Approvers will also be managed in the new workflow.
Migration and Document Approval Status
When a new workflow is activated, all documents pending approval in the legacy Workflow approval engine will be assigned an ‘Action Required’ status, meaning they must be redirected to the new engine by re-submitting them manually for approval.
To do this, navigate to the Purchase Orders and/or Purchase Invoices listing screens, find the documents with ‘action required’ status (by filtering Approval Status column), and click on Re-submit for approval against each document. Documents that were in the process of being approved in the old WFA engine will have an ‘Action required’ status.
Overview of Document statuses
Old Status >> New Status |
Explanation |
Pending >> Action required |
Any PO or PI with a Pending status must be assigned a new workflow and re-sent for approval. After migration, Action required can indicate that the document has been returned by an approver for editing.
|
Pending Approval >> Action required |
The document was waiting for someone’s approval. Once the new WFA engine is enabled, these documents must be re-submitted for approval. |
Approved >> Approved |
All fully approved documents will have the same status of Approved. |
Rejected >> Rejected |
Documents rejected by the approver and requiring editing will stay as Rejected. |
Cancelled >> Cancelled |
Cancelled documents will stay as Cancelled and will not go through the workflow approval process. |
Approval Not Required |
Only visible to old workflow approval engine users. There is no equivalent for this status in the new engine. |
New Status |
Explanation |
|---|---|
Pending |
The initial status in new WFA engine. It is used when a document: Newly created and is awaiting being picked up by the engine |
Awaiting approval |
The document is awaiting approval from assigned approvers. |
Admin required |
No valid workflows were found for the document in the new workflow engine.
|
Migration and Reports
Migration will not affect the reports available to you. Rather, the content of the reports will update to reflect the new WFA setup.