Supplier Invoice Approval Process

4.5.7 Supplier Invoice Approval Process

The Supplier Invoice Approval process provides a mechanism to manage the approval of Supplier Invoices. Each agent can adjust their Preferences on the Home Page to enable them to access the Supplier Invoices widget which will display the number of invoices to approve. 

By default this facility is turned off. In this case all supplier invoices are automatically stamped as Approved when they are recorded in the system so that payment details can be recorded against the invoice manually. 

When the Invoice Approval process is turned on, any new Supplier Invoices loaded into the system are recorded with a status of Unapproved. In this case the invoices need to be approved before payment details can be recorded manually or the Bulk Supplier Payment function can be run. Each supplier invoice can be approved by a maximum of three people within your business:

  1. Firstly, the Property Manager for the block
  2. Secondly, the Sponsor for the block
  3. Thirdly, an Agent Approver (The Agent Approvers are those who can approve supplier invoices for any blocks whereas the non-Agent approvers can only approve supplier invoices in their own blocks where they are the Property Manager / Sponsor).
The screen to activate / deactivate this process can be:
Accessed via the Workbench -> Settings (small gear or cog icon on top right) -> Organisation -> Supplier Invoice Authorisation tab. 
From this screen, the user can activate the Supplier Invoice Approvals process by ticking the 'Supplier invoice approval process' checkbox at the top right hand corner of the screen. 
There is an additional setting called Supplier Invoice Allocation Check (Multiple Schedules Only) which you can turn on so that invoices during the approval process has a check on whether the expenditure has been fully allocated to the block schedules before it is approved. Supplier invoices belong to a block with only one block schedule do not have this check applied as all expenditure is allocated to that one schedule. 


For example, Dominic can have an approval limit of £10,000, Ram £5,000, Les £1,000 and Alain an approval limit of £0. 

For this example, Steve is the Property Manager and Ram is the Sponsor and Dominic is the Agent Approver.



When a supplier invoice is first recorded in the Block Area, with the Supplier Invoice Approvals Process switched on, the supplier invoice is loaded as Unapproved.

In this example, the supplier invoice was recorded for £300 in a block where Steve is the Property Manager, but the invoice itself is above Steve's approval limit of £100. 

When Steve first logs into the workbench, he will see from the widget that he has a few supplier invoices awaiting his approval. If he clicks on the widget he will be taken to the approvals screen where he can view more information about the invoice by clicking on the 'Details' button,*(see Details screen section below for more information),

 add comments and approve the invoices by clicking the 'Approve' button. 
The screen can also be accessed via the Workbench -> Finance -> Account Payable -> Invoice Approval. 

Once approved, the invoice disappears from this screen and can be accessed by clicking on the 'Show Approved Invoices' button where it will then show up as 'Awaiting Sponsor Approval'. Invoices below £100 can be immediately approved and paid by Steve (approval limit of £100) whereas invoices above that value require the sponsor's approval (Ram - £1,000). 

NotesThe 'Show Approved Invoices' only shows the invoices that you have approved by yourself and not other people's, even if you are an Agent Approver.
















When Ram logs in and accesses the invoice approval screens, he would have to approve the invoices up to his level of £1,000 but anything above his limit would require Dominic's final approval as he is the Agent Approver. In this example Ram can approve the £300 invoice already approved by Steve and then it can be paid so this particular invoice just needed 2 approvals in order to get paid.

In the event that Steve is away and invoices require approval, Ram being the sponsor of this block, is able to search for Steve's invoices using the 'All invoices' option. Thereafter he can approve Steve's invoices whilst he is away. 

Once invoices have been approved, they can be paid.

When the Supplier Invoice Allocation Check is on, then the invoice will not be approved if they have not been fully allocated to block schedules. An error is displayed if you try to approve one invoice and it fails:


If you have chosen multiple invoices to approve and they are not fully allocated to the block schedules then a pop up alert is shown of the invoices that cannot be approved:


You can split the expenditure across the block schedules if some invoices can not be approved as they are not fully allocated.
You can use the split feature regardless if the Supplier Invoice Allocation check is enabled. 
Alert
NOTE: When you have not got the appropriate approval limit then this error is handled first before the allocation check. 
* Details screen


The Details screen provides all the relevant information of the supplier invoice and the user can:
  1. Approve the invoice
    1. You can also edit the approval amount and only approve a certain amount of the invoice total instead so only that is paid during the Bulk Supplier Payment Run
    2. Edit the date to release funds so that it is picked up in the Bulk Supplier Payment Run depending on this
  2. Add comments
    1. a speech bubble icon will display in the Invoice Approval list screen - if clicked on will take you into the details of the invoice and straight to the comment
  3. See the Fund label which shows the:
    1. Available Balance: primary service charge and primary reserve fund balance total
    2. SC Balance: primary service charge fund balance
  4. Supplier Payment Details - information is pulled through from the agent supplier details
  5. Split the invoice line items
  6. Upload document
  7. View the budget details associated to the service in the invoice line item
  8. Login to Block
Split button:
The split option is similar to the one in the supplier invoices details screen within either the Workbench or Block Area.
Notes
When the allocation check is on and the system doesn't allow you to approve an invoice due to it not being fully allocated, then you can quickly split the expenditures to the block schedules in order to approve it. 



The yellow button is if the invoice has been fully allocated to the block schedules and the blue button is if you still need to allocate it fully. 
Once you click either button, you will be shown the Schedule Allocation pop up: 
 
Budget button:
In addition, on the right hand side on each Invoice Item is a ‘Budget’ button which can be clicked on and will display a pop-up window with the following information fields: Budget details, Financial Year, Status, Service, Budget Amount, Budget Comment.

This information is taken directly from the ‘Annual Budget’ screen in the relevant Block area.


Notes
NOTE: If the Budget button is coloured Green then that means there are Budget Comments associated with that particular Service Name and if you hover your cursor over the button those comments are displayed.
On the Budget pop-up window the user can click on the ‘Edit’ button and that will enable them to add/delete/change the existing Comment(s) that are there for that Service and this will automatically update the Comments field shown on the Annual Budget screen in the Block area.

A user can also make changes to the Budget Comments in that field in the Block area which will update what is shown on the Budget pop-up window in the Details screen of the Invoice Approval screen.

Bulk Supplier Payments
This can be accessed via the Workbench -> Finance -> Accounts Payable -> Bulk Supplier Payments. 
Notes
NOTE: If the total outstanding amount for a supplier is in credit then invoices will not appear here for that supplier. The invoices would need to be paid manually within the block. 
Example: If you approved an invoice for £20 for a supplier and there is a credit note against that same supplier for £40 then overall the supplier is in credit by £20. 
You can't link one supplier invoice to another yet but you could manually pay off £20 on the invoice and write down credit and on the credit note add in £20 and reference the invoice number of the original invoice. 

This screen has 3 steps associated with it:
  1. Review Supplier Invoices - Here you get to Produce a report that shows all approved supplier invoices across all blocks that are ready to be paid. It is then broken into 3 sections:
    1. Approved invoices with sufficient funds for payments
    2. Approved invoices with sufficient funds for payment, but block will be low on funds once invoices are paid NOTE: The condition for invoices to appear in this section is when the block's funds will be lower than total based on a calculation of £50 (default system amount) multiplied by the number of units.  So if you have 10 units then the threshold will be £500 (£50 multiplied by 10) and if the block's funds go below this amount after recording payments for the invoice, then the invoices appear in this section. 
    3. Approved invoices, but the block has insufficient funds for payment. These invoices will NOT be marked as paid.  
  2. Record Invoices as Paid - Once you have ran the report, this section will show you a summary of the BACS and cheque payments for the invoices together with its value. Then you click on 'Run payment batch' to stamp the supplier invoices as paid. 
  3. Process Payments - This is post payment data such as a Batch Summary of all invoices that were paid in that batch (‘Produce for Batch’) and there is a dropdown menu to produce previous Batches.
You can then select from a few buttons at the bottom of the screen:
  1. Batch Summary
  2. Cheque Letters can be produced and sent to the supplier providing that there was a cheque payment made in section 2.
  3. Payment File option which provides an extract that can be uploaded to the following banking services in order to make the payments from the physical bank account, this is available by selecting from the dropdown menu:
    1. NatWest Bankline
    2. Metro Bank Commercial Online Banking
    3. Metro Bank Commercial Online Banking - Without 'From Account'
    4. Lloyds Commercial Banking
    5. Barclays.net SIF
    6. HSBC BACS Standard
    7. Danske Bank (NOTE: If you open this file up in Excel, the format may be converted by Excel as it is a CSV)
  4. Payment File payment date – the user will need to click in this field and select the date they want for the payment to be made on the payment file extract they upload to the bank.
  5. Email Remittance - This allows you to send a remittance to the supplier. When you click on this, a new pop up window is displayed which allows you to select the contacts from each supplier within the batch and then you can send them an email with the remittance of their payments against the invoice:                                 
  6. Create Clearing Batch - This option is only available if you have setup a 'Clearing Account' (see this KB article for more info: 3.5.9 Group Bank Accounts). After you create a clearing batch, you can then generate a BACS file using the Payment File button (You still need to pick the payment date). This is a different file format to the normal Payment Files available and generates a BACS payment file and a transfer CSV which allows an aggregated amount to be transferred from the Clearing Account to the supplier rather than individual payments for each invoice to the supplier as well as show the user what transfers to make from which block account into the 'Clearing Account'.                                                             
Notes
NOTE: A zip file is downloaded when you click on the BACS option which contain these details files:

Examples of documents accessed on this screen are attached below.

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