Bills - Ability to allow multiple levels of approval for bills
Ability to approve bills by more than one user in Xero.
Purpose: Because some companies have more than 1 directors/managers, so this feature will improve users’ workflow in approving the bills within Xero.
Hey community, thank you for continuing to highlight how important multi-level approvals for paying bills can be for teams of all sizes. We’re currently building a customisable bill approval workflow into Xero that'll let admins set rules based on factors such as amount, supplier, account code or who submitted the bill. You’ll then be able to automatically route bills through selected approvers in sequential or parallel steps. ✨
Approvers will be able to take action in Xero, with a digital audit trail captured in history and notes to identify who approved a bill and when - Helping to keep the approval chain moving. You can read more about our direction in our update on The Long and Short of It.
I’ll come back to share as this begins to officially rollout.
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Kimberley Jacobs
commented
Some of our accounts have multiple approval authorities for items above certain limits. This would therefore be an extremely important feature.
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Mukhtar Hasan
commented
Some of our cllients have multiple approval authorities for items above certian limits. This would therefore be an extremely important feature.
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Donna Robb
commented
This would be useful and also to be able to filter the bills to be paid by each 'approver'
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Linda Kennington
commented
I have a client who is asking about this feature also as they have recently begun a company that has two directors and would like the ability for both directors to be able to view and approve bills and invoices for payment that are entered/prepared by me, their bookkeeper.
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Mukhtar Hasan
commented
This is critical for one of our clients. They have a system of having two authorized persons approve a bill before it is passed on for payment. Without this, they are not able to implement Xero and are looking elsewhere.
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Rachael D
commented
We have several budget holders as well. We are still a paper based organization because of the lack of ability to get explicit approval electronically this way. This has environmental sustainability implications and that's why I have classified this matter as critical.
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Caroline Harris
commented
As a not-for-profit organisation, all payments must be authorised by 2 managers. Currently it is very time consuming to download bill, send to managers, screen shot approvals and upload as attachments.
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Sue Holdship
commented
Many clients would like this feature
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Michael Dambrosio
commented
At least one other user with limited rights to approve should be available under settings. Currently clients are forced to go to their bank's software eg CBA and its Commbiz which then necessitates a lot of emails between members and then manual entry into Xero. My client now is considering severing the Xero bank link and perhaps switching to another software. I note that apps are available at significant additional cost and perhaps Xero is relying on the extra income from the app.
Xero has suggested a work around but the risk of a standard user appoving and paying a fraudulent bill remains. -
Andrew Hollingsworth
commented
I think there are two critical issues. An approval path were two people need to approve but also a 'private' path so that fees for professional services awaiting approval cannot be seen by say the catering manager who needs to login to approve food purchases. I have concluded that something like ApprovalMax is needed and Xero without the additional App is not going to work.
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Sally Fraser
commented
Two people to approve billing would be great. We have a requirement to have 2 people approve all payments individually. At the moment we do this on paper but electronically would save the paper/environment/storage requirements ect
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Desmond Sowah
commented
Can we now have more than one approver before the final approver(Director) in using Xero? Can Xero team also consider a cut off point for user who fail who fail to send a request for approval withing a specific period when they expected to do so. Same for user who still have money/advance cannot for projects cannot send a request for another unless necessary? Also a customized Report for Managers and Directors.
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Cindy Diller
commented
At the very least, allowing someone who enters a bill to add 2 approvers is a very critical function. This simple function is what send people to other bill pay platforms
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Pitstone Hall Manager
commented
Two person approval is a must for many charities and organisations
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Andrew Chain
commented
There are churches who require all bills jointly approved. These are done paper at the moment. If Xero has joint approval function, the approval can be done electronically and it improves efficiency.
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Jane Liong
commented
Ability to assign the relevant approver at least up to 2 would be better so bills can be processed more seamlessly & email approvals back & forth comms can be cut down
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Ann McNally
commented
Bills being sent to specific person for approval is definitely required especially for businesses which have different departments. Thought about adding a tracking category for the different departments however tracking categories only appear to work on reports and the invoice has to be approved. to appear on the report. Adding tacking category column to the bills screens would help in the meantime.
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Larry Podmore
commented
Currently we have to produce another document which is signed/approved for each payment, scanned to PDF, added to Bill/document and uploaded for Bookkeeper to approve for payment in Xero: as others have stated, this approval is part of the Audit.
HubDoc does not appear to offer this function either. -
Chris Curlett
commented
This is fundamental to the Audit process in the approval of Bills and would strengthen the fraud prevention process. Really support the development of this.
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Dean Griffin
commented
There is the same issue within the expenses module, all approvers see all expenses, rather than just their own reports, which is a bit ridiculous.
There is a Payroll function in Xero where you can assign a manager to an employee for holiday approvals, why can this not be carried over into the financial side of it, and be used for routing approvals?