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What is Invoice Approval?

If you want tighter control over your invoice process, you can require that invoices be approved in Garde before being sent to your accounting system. You can specify that ALL invoices require approval, or you can easily set rules to require the approval of only certain expense categories with charges exceeding certain amounts or from certain vendors only that require manual invoice approval. Having Invoice Approval enabled gives you a flexible way to make quick edits or adjustments to your invoices before they are closed, thus helping ensure timely and accurate reporting.

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Reviewing invoices

Navigate to Inventory > Invoices and use the Needs Review tab. This tab shows all invoices waiting for your attention.
  • View the invoice image side-by-side with the Garde coding
  • Adjust the date, invoice number, customer number, or payment account
  • View the data as individual line items or as category summaries
  • Change a product’s category
  • Spot check new vendor items and products (highlighted with an orange icon)
  • Adjust a vendor item’s packaging, quantity, or price
  • Create a credit when adjusting for items not received
When you are satisfied, click Approve to close the invoice. If something is wrong, click Deny to send it back. You can also approve or deny invoices directly from the invoice list without opening them. Each row in the table has Approve (green), Deny (red), and Export buttons in the Actions column, so you can take action on straightforward invoices quickly. If you have several invoices that do not need detailed review, you can select multiple invoices using the checkboxes and approve them in bulk.

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Invoices pending review

Invoices waiting for review also appear in your Work Pipeline (navigate to Intelligence > Tasks) so you do not miss them. You can access pending invoices from either the Needs Review tab or the Work Pipeline.

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Invoice Approval Mode - ALL

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Mobile review

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Invoice Approval Mode - SOME

If you set the Invoice Approval mode to ‘Some’, you can select which invoices will require manual invoice approval based on the categories and vendors. You can choose your workflow based on these parameters:
  • Is it a brand new vendor item?
  • Is it an invoice from a specific vendor?
  • Is it a new vendor?
  • Does it have products on it associated with a specific category?
    • Does the category have a certain spend threshold?
  • Is it a credit?
Keep reading for more details on each!

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NEW VENDOR ITEMS

If you want to limit the invoices you approve to just those with new vendor items (i.e. items you purchased for the first time), select the box to “Only require invoices with new vendor items…“and click SAVE. (If you have been using the New Vendor Item Review to see these items, this will streamline your work!) This option can be selected by itself and will only require approval for invoices with new vendor items. But it can also be an add-on to the category and vendor options as well. Meaning, if you want to restrict based on vendor or category, you can do that AND still see all invoices with new vendor items.

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CATEGORIES

Under the “Categories” tab, you can select the specific categories that you want to require approval. Any invoice that has products categorized to these will flow through Invoice Approval workflow. You may optionally include a minimum dollar threshold for each category in the Amount column. If left blank, all invoices with the selected category will require manual approval regardless of the purchase amount. If you want to also include Credits that contain products within your selected categories, be sure to select the “Include credits in invoice approval ” box as well. Click SAVE to confirm the selections. In the example below, only invoices with $50 or more in total charges in the Beer category will require approval:

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VENDORS

Under the “Vendors” tab, you can select the specific vendors that you want to require approval. Just check the box next to the vendors you want to include in the approval workflow. If you want to ensure you always see the first invoice from a newly created vendor, select ‘Require approval for new vendor ’ to include those, and they will appear regardless of any vendors selected. If you want to also include Credits that from the vendors you have selected here, be sure to select the “Include credits in invoice approval ” box as well. Click SAVE to confirm the selections. In the example below, invoices from all new vendors and invoices from the vendor Coastal Sunbelt Produce Company will require approval:

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Adjusting Your Invoice Approval Settings

Even if you have activated invoice approval for certain categories or vendors or you choose to have all the invoices go through manual invoice approval, the invoice approval setting can be changed at any time by going to Orders > Invoice Approval and clicking on “Invoice Approval Setup”. Follow the same steps as you did for setting up invoice approval to make any adjustments.

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Read more: Using Invoice Approval