Filevine allows you to assign an invoice approver role and to mark an invoice as pending approval or approved, helping to support a pre-bill workflow.
Approver Role
The approver role allows you to specify a role for the invoice approver in a project. The approver will be listed in the Billing Advanced tool.
Set Up
To set up the pre-bill workflow, you must select an approver role for the Org. The user assigned to the “first” position of the role will be listed as the “Approver” in the Billing Advanced tool table.
Click Main Menu > Advanced and then select Billing Setup from the left side menu. Click the Invoices tab and then click Invoice Approval.
In the dropdown, select the role you would like to act as the approver across the Org. Click Save.
You can choose any role created in the Role Setup Advanced tool to be the invoice approver role. If you would like to define a new role just for invoice approval, add this role to the Roles Setup tool. You will then be able to select that role from the Invoice Approver dropdown.
In the Invoices Table
Once the approver role is chosen, a user with access to the Billing Advanced tool can view the approver role for all invoices. Click Main Menu > Advanced > Billing to navigate to the Billing Advanced tool, and then click the Invoices tab.
An “Approver” column appears in the table. This column is filled by the user assigned to the first position of the approver role in the invoice’s project. If no user is assigned to the approver role, the field is blank. Users can filter by column to see all invoices with a specified approver.
Approval Statuses
Invoices can be marked with two new optional statuses: “Pending Approval” and “Approved.” Read more about billing items and statuses. The “Pending Approval” status is only available if the project has someone in the chosen invoice approver role.
Invoices in "Editing" status can be marked as "Pending Approval" or "Approved." Invoices in "Editing" or "Pending Approval" status can be marked as "Approved." Invoices in “Editing,” “Pending Approval,” and “Approved” statuses can be marked as "Final."
When invoices are marked with the “Approved” status, they will be locked and will no longer be editable (just as with the existing “Final” status).
Change Statuses
To mark an invoice “Pending Approval,” select the desired invoices and click the arrow icon. In the pop-up model, click Send.
Note: The invoice will be marked with the “Pending Approval” status, but no other changes will take place in-app. The admin or approver must take the next steps for approval.
To mark “Approved,” select the desired invoices and click the stamp icon. In the popup modal, click Approve.
Workflow
With the approver role and statuses, a billing admin is now able to filter invoices by status and by approver. They can also make status updates in bulk. One possible workflow for these features is as follows:
The billing admin navigates to Advanced > Billing > Invoices and filters the invoices by the “Editing” status, and then by a single approver. They then generate and download PDFs for the filtered list in bulk, and mark the invoices as “Pending Approval.”
The PDFs are distributed, reviewed by the correct approver, and returned.
When the invoices are returned to the billing admin, they navigate to the Invoice tab in the Billing Advanced tool, where they can make any needed adjustments to individual invoices by clicking on the invoice number. Once the invoices are adjusted as needed, the billing admin marks them “Approved.”
Another possible workflow could be giving invoice approvers access to the Advanced Billing tool. Each approver could then review and approve invoices there, and change the status of the invoices as needed.
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