Approve a bill: WorkApproved help

You approve a bill from your queue by opening it, checking it and choosing Approve, Reject or Ask a question.

Find your bills

Sign in. The first page, Waiting for you, lists what needs your decision. You can order it Due soonest or Riskiest first.
If you work with more than one organisation, filter by organisation.
Open an organisation's Approvals page to see more. Show lets you pick Waiting for you, Everything or Exceptions. Below your own bills you also see Waiting for someone else and Recently decided.
Paused bills are Waiting on an answer to a question, or Held. They come back to you when they can be decided.
Find an approval searches by supplier, number, date, type, outcome or who approved it. Every approved bill has its certificate there.

When you approve one bill, you go straight to the next one waiting on you. Next bill on the bill page does the same.

On the bill page

You see who submitted the bill, its dates and reference, its lines and totals, the attachment (usually the supplier's invoice), recent bills from the same supplier, and the Conversation so far. Open in Xero takes you to the bill there. The path so far shows the steps it has been through. Once a bill is approved, Certificate downloads its record.

Amounts are shown without tax, in the organisation's main currency, unless a line says otherwise.

A banner may explain why a bill reached you. This one fell through the workflow means it did not fit the workflow, so it came to a person as an exception. Nothing is approved by default.

If the attachment cannot be shown on the page, Open the document opens it in a new tab. On a flagged bill you are asked to tick I've seen the document in Xero before approving.

Risk flags

WorkApproved flags common signs of error and fraud on bills, such as duplicates and changed bank details. A flag is a prompt to look, not a verdict. It never blocks a bill by itself, and it cannot catch everything.

Each flag is Info, Caution or High, and shows its reason in plain words. How much more you see depends on your settings. If you submitted the bill yourself, you will not see the reasons unless you are an administrator. For what each level means, see What the risk flags mean.

A High flag must be acknowledged before you can approve:

Look at the flag. Go to the risk flag jumps to it.
Check it yourself. For example, ring the supplier on a number you already hold.
Tick the box to say you checked it.
If you can see the full details, write what you checked in the What did you check? box.
Choose Approve.

The comment is printed on the certificate, which anyone who can open the bill in Xero can read. Keep it factual.

Your decision

The Your decision box has one comment box and the buttons below it.

Approve. A comment is optional. If you were asked to approve only some lines, the button says Approve my lines.
Reject. Write the reason first. It goes back to whoever submitted the bill. The bill is returned to draft in Xero with the reason added to its history and notes.
Ask a question. Write your question, choose Ask a question, pick who from Who to ask, and choose Send question. The approval pauses until it is answered, and you are told when it is.

On a phone, write your reason or question, then tap Reject or Ask in the bar at the bottom. More holds the attachment and, for administrators, Reassign.

If you see You can't approve this one, the settings do not allow you to approve a bill you submitted. If you see Nothing for you to decide here, the bill is waiting on someone else. If you see No one can approve this, an administrator needs to fix the workflow. If an administrator reassigned the bill to someone else, the page says who, and you can no longer approve it.

Going away, or need someone else to decide

If you will be away, set up a stand-in for yourself: choose Going away? Set up a stand-in or open the People page, then choose who covers for you and the dates. The certificate says the stand-in approved on your behalf. Administrators can set one up for anyone, and can switch stand-ins off under Allow stand-ins in Approval settings. If you need someone else to decide one bill, ask an administrator to reassign it.

Reassign a bill (administrators)

If the person a bill is waiting on is away, an administrator can move that one bill to someone else, including a bill that is waiting on an answer to a question. The workflow does not change, and neither do the steps after this one.

Open the bill and choose Reassign. On a phone, it is under More.
If the step needs everyone on it to approve, choose Whose place to move. The others stay.
Choose who to reassign it to. Only people who can approve are offered, never the person who submitted the bill.
Write the reason. Everyone who can see the bill reads it, and it is printed on the certificate.
Choose Reassign.

If the person does not have enough approval authority for the amount under your workflow, you are asked to tick Override the authority limit. The override is recorded and shown with your reason. You can take the bill yourself; the history and the certificate then show that the same person reassigned it and approved it.

The new approver is told it is waiting, and the person it was moved from is told it was moved. Reminders and escalation start again for the new approver. Any risk flag still has to be acknowledged before approving. You cannot reassign your own place on a bill, or a bill you submitted.

After everyone has approved

WorkApproved approves the bill in Xero and attaches the certificate. If Xero does not take it straight away, you may see Waiting for Xero or Held. An administrator is alerted and WorkApproved tries again, so you usually need do nothing. If a bill is held because its certificate is too large, an administrator can choose Make a smaller certificate.

Keyboard shortcuts

On a computer, press ? in the queue to see the shortcuts for moving down the list, opening, approving and rejecting. On a bill, a approves, r rejects and q asks a question, once you have written your comment. A bill with a caution flag asks you to read the flag and press a again. From the queue, a on a bill with a high risk flag opens it at the flag instead of approving.

Approve a bill