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A/P Approval Considerations
Here are the key considerations that I pose to my clients when we are designing a vendor bill approval workflow in NetSuite. This is not to be confused with a vendor bill payment approval process. An approval process on the vendor bill is for accepting P&L impact against a budget, validating GL coding, and matching against authorized purchase orders. An approval process on the vendor bill payment is a cash disbursement control and typically is just approved by the CFO.
- How will the vendor bill be sourced in? Manual entry, OCR, CSV import?
- Will the approval process be completed in a third-party application or in NetSuite?
- How many levels of approval do you want?
- Can multiple approvers approve simultaneously, or will it be sequential?
- Do all approvers have access to NetSuite, or will they approve in third-party or via email?
- Do you need a superapprover?
- Can approvers edit any fields on the vendor bill?
- Where will the PDF copy be retained? Will it be attached to a NetSuite vendor bill record?
- How will you handle any unapproved bills when ready to close A/P during month end close? Is it acceptable to accrue for all activity pending approval?
- What will be the process for placing a vendor bill in dispute? What will be the process for removing dispute status?
- What info is required to provide an A/P analyst if vendor bill is rejected by an approver?
- Do you need 3 Way Match (3WM) automated logic built into the approval?
- Do you have partial receiving/partial billing that needs to be approved in the 3WM logic?