How invoice auto approval works

There are of course several checks performed on each invoice to prevent mistakes and fraud. This allows you to set up a contract and allow it to be processed without any additional checks. The following will explain the checks the system is completing.

The calculation to check if the invoice provided by the contractor fits with the details of the contract is:

invoice value + vat is less than or equal to (contract value + vat) / maximum number of invoices + tolerance level

(The vat rate is calculated based on the values entered by the contractor, and matched to accounting vat types for the managing agent)

With this in mind the criteria are:

• Contract must be approved
• Maximum number of invoices must not be exceeded
• Invoice work dates must be within the date range of the contract
• Invoice work dates must not be a duplicate of another invoice for the contract
• Contractor invoice numbers must not be duplicated
• Vat amount supplied by the contractor must match within a penny of a vat rate of the managing agent
• Auto approval calculation must be true

The date of the invoice is only used when applied invoices are linked to old contracts. If a contract has been renewed (or expired) any historically relevant invoice will be applied within 3 months of the renewal. 

Once the auto approval criteria have been passed the invoice goes straight through to approved ready to be exported.

To see if your contract is set up for auto approval check the approval status.

If your invoice fails to auto approve it will have a message in the invoice processing tool.

Note-

If the Category for the work order/contract linked with an invoice has a handling group, then the related invoices will be assigned to the category handling group, rather than the building handling group. The building group for invoices can be checked under Setup / building approval steps.

When a member of the handling group linked with given Category approves the invoice, it moves onto the Team Managers for the special handling group (if the Managing agent has this privilege).  And then continues as normal onto Director to Approve or Accounts Payable to Approve.

Credit notes

An invoice is considered to be a credit note if at least one of the following criteria is met:

• The sum of the net price is negative
• The sum of the gross price is negative

Credit notes are not included in the count of invoices submitted against a contract, and are automatically approved even if the maximum number of invoices has been exceeded (provided the other auto approval criteria have been met).

Editing

When an invoice that failed auto approval is edited, if the edit brings it back to being valid, then a single approval will auto approve it. The rules are identical to as above. This also bypasses "two pairs of eyes".

Invoice Processing Validation

Once the auto approval criteria have been passed, then the invoice must pass all the normal checks that are needed for an invoice to be processed.

• Contract must have valid cost assignments
• Contractor invoice number must not be a duplicate
• Other

Notes Added

These notes may be added to the invoice: 

• Pre-approved via Contract 
• Invoice greater than tolerance 
• Invalid amounts
• Undefined vat amount (This means that based on the Net and Vat amounts entered, the vat rate of the invoice does not match the vat rate of the Contract)
• Unapproved
• Not a unique date range (the date invoice date range overlaps with another invoice submitted for the contract)
• Work dates are outside the contract period (i.e. the invoice start AND finish date are not within the contract start/end date)
• Duplicate invoice number
• Exceeded maximum number of invoices
• Missing cost assignments
• User <username> has updated this invoice.
• Buildings have changed, property manager must review and approve.
• Invalid group schedule splits (this means the group schedule related to the invoice may not have splits with expense types, or may not have splits at all, which would not allow the invoice export to the accounting system)
• Alarm threshold exceeded (the schedule alarm threshold may be exceeded, which requires managing agents to add a comment to the cost assignments before the invoice can be approved).