Electronic invoice approval software gives a supplier invoice a clear path from receipt to a recorded decision. Instead of searching email threads for permission to pay, the team can review the invoice, supporting documents and approval history together.
Folderit supports the document and approval part of that process: storing invoices, recording metadata, assigning reviewers and tracking their responses. Your accounting system remains responsible for ledger entries, tax treatment, payment runs and reconciliation. An approved document is not proof that a payment has been made.
What an invoice approval workflow should establish
Before an invoice reaches the payment queue, someone needs to establish what was purchased, whether it was received, whether the amount is correct and who has authority to approve it. A useful workflow makes those responsibilities explicit.
- The invoice: supplier name, invoice number, invoice date, amount and currency.
- The context: purchase order or contract reference, cost centre and evidence of delivery or acceptance.
- The decision: the responsible approver, their response and any explanation.
- The next action: ready for payment processing, rejected, or awaiting clarification.
Choose fields that your team will actually maintain. For example, storing the amount as a number and the currency separately makes a threshold-based process easier to define than a free-text field containing both.
A practical invoice approval process in Folderit
1. Capture the invoice and its supporting information
Save the invoice in the designated Folderit location and enter the agreed metadata. Link the purchase order, contract or delivery confirmation as related items where appropriate. The Folderit Outlook add-in can also save selected emails and attachments into a Folderit folder.
Decide when an invoice is ready for review. If folder-level automation starts as soon as a file is added, the reviewers may receive their tasks before someone has completed the metadata. An intake folder followed by a review folder, or a carefully configured conditional automation, can help your team control that handoff.
2. Assign the right reviewers
A simple invoice may need one budget owner’s approval. A more involved purchase might require confirmation from the person who received the goods, followed by Finance. In Folderit, Parallel sends tasks to recipients together, Serial sends them in sequence, and Custom arranges recipients into stages.
Use the approval instructions to explain each person’s responsibility. “Confirm the goods were received” and “Check the invoice against the purchase order” are more useful than asking every participant to perform an undefined general review.
3. Define the acceptance and rejection rules
For a stage with several participants, Folderit supports acceptance by all recipients, a fixed number or a percentage. Rejection thresholds can also be defined. Choose these rules to match your authorization policy: a majority vote is inappropriate if a particular Finance review is mandatory.
The Workflow Designer supports configured triggers and conditions for more advanced routing. If you build amount-based routes, test the threshold boundary, missing amounts and every supported currency. A EUR threshold should not silently become the same numerical threshold in another currency.
4. Give reviewers enough context
Enable metadata and related-item visibility where the reviewer needs them. Recipients receive workflow tasks by email and in My tasks. They can approve, reject or request clarification. A clarification request leaves the original approval task open until the reviewer makes a decision.
Keep exceptions visible. A disputed quantity, missing purchase order or suspected duplicate should have an owner and a resolution, rather than being treated as approved because a deadline has passed.
5. Record the outcome and hand off to payment processing
After successful completion, a workflow can optionally move the invoice to another folder. For example, a “Ready for payment processing” folder can serve as a controlled handoff to Finance. Record the accounting reference and payment status through your agreed process; do not infer payment from the Folderit approval status.
The item’s Workflows section shows status and activity. Expand an entry to review decisions, comments, participants and timestamps. Summary of all workflows provides downloadable evidence, with available formats depending on the item and file type.
Invoice due dates and workflow deadlines are separate
The document’s Due Date metadata records its due date. Folderit’s Admin Tools → Dashboard & Reports → Due Documents report lists documents that are overdue or due within the next 30 days.
A workflow’s Due By deadline is an independent, informational setting. It is not automatically set by the document’s Due Date. In Workflow Designer, a configured timeout is also separate: it determines when the process follows its Timeout route. Make these distinctions clear when designing an invoice process around payment deadlines.
Controls to keep outside the approval shortcut
Workflow automation helps route work consistently; it does not by itself validate an invoice or prevent fraud. Keep supplier bank-detail verification, duplicate checks and payment authorization in your finance controls. A changed bank account should be verified through an established channel, independently of the invoice email.
Separate the ability to submit an invoice from authority to approve and pay it where your policy requires that separation. Apply appropriate access to invoices and supporting documents, and use a retention schedule based on the records and jurisdictions involved.
Test the process before rolling it out
Run sample invoices through a normal approval, a rejection, a clarification request, a missing-field case and an unavailable approver. Confirm that the correct people see the necessary documents, the next stage starts only when its rule is satisfied, and Finance can retrieve the completed record.
Measure time to decision, invoices awaiting clarification and overdue work. These reveal whether the process is improving. For setup instructions, see approval workflows and reusable workflow templates. Start with one invoice type, then expand the process after the team has tested it.
