AP Approval Process

Jennifer Benson

What are some best practices you utilize for approving AP Invoices? What reports are you running? What does your approver review? I am a new employee and am trying to create a more efficient process for our AP Approval process.

Wendy Croker

Our process is still very manual - looking to implement the Expense Management module at some point. Invoices are coded by the purchaser and submitted to the accounting department for data entry. Once entered, they are approved by one of our staff with signing authority. Cheques are then printed and signed by a second signer, invoices are provided as supporting documents with the cheques. We do not require 2 signatures on our cheques but we create that dual approval by having a signer approve the invoice. We feel that encourages each signer to focus on their responsibility rather than just adding a second signature to a cheque.


The step we are missing is to have the department head approve the purchase. We have about 50 employees so the signers still have a pretty good handle on what's happening in each department so approving the invoice is fine but the department heads feel like they are missing that info. We would like a process where each department head signs off on the invoice before the cheque is printed. It's just cumbersome at the moment, creating delays particularly during covid when all our staff aren't in the office like they normally would be. It's a bit tricky to keep track of where paper invoices are in the approval process to ensure that they come back to accounting and get paid on time so we haven't implemented that yet.

Katie Turner

Are you using Expense Management to route your invoices with approvals (I'd love to hear from people doing this as we would love to implement this procedure!) or are you talking old school AP approvals? We are currently old school where the requestor and their manager have to approve the invoice and provide the GL account number to which it should be charged. Pre-COVID, that was all done manually, using an invoice cover sheet. Now, since we are all largely still remote, we use email approvals. The person running AP has final eyes on the invoice as he inputs it into the system double checking amounts and GL accounts/projects. Since it's a manual process, we have no reports to pull for approvals. However, we have started using the AP Dashboard in FENXT to keep an eye on how many invoices are currently in the system, aging, etc.

Jennifer Benson

We are currently looking into getting the Expense Management tool. At this time I manually enter in the AP invoices. I then email our supervisor and they just review our coding. They are not looking at any individual invoices, dollar amount or even the actual invoice itself. They are then utilizing an excel sheet with the coding breakdown and running and opening an allocation report then adding to the excel. The dollar amount on the excel should match to what the dollar invoice number I am giving them. They then go in and approve all the invoices. I really want to find a new way to approve and process payments daily or weekly. When I process my Invoices I filter my view to show pending only, I then export to an excel right from NXT to give them the numbers they need. I can then break the excel up into tabs for checks and efts which should balance to the reports generated when we process payments. I am hoping the expense management tool could help but cant find real processing videos or training.

Kim Szalkus

Jennifer - we (Ronald McDonald House of Chicagoland & NW Indiana) are using the Expense Management module to route invoices for approval. Works well but needs further development. Biggest issue is that if an approver does not approve the invoice, (1) you cannot see it because there is currently not a report to show you what is stuck in process waiting for approval and (2) the Administrator cannot force it through or re-direct it to another approver. I believe that both of these items are on the list to develop, but as of now, I am not aware of any fix. But even with these flaws, we have been using the process to get approvals electronically since the start of COVID and it works. You just need to track what you route for approval. If you want to connect directly with us, please send me an email. kszalkus@rmhccni.org

Katie Turner

Kim, thank you for your reply! Understanding exactly how the ExpMgmt tool works in this instance, and it's drawbacks, is incredibly helpful!

Geoffrey Goodfellow

For what it's worth, I just had a discussion about this with our Blackbaud Account Exec yesterday. The Expense Management module is really designed for employee reimbursement of expenses. It seems to be a good tool for submitting mileage requests, reimbursement for travel expenses, etc. The tie in to the expense cards for each employee makes this very handy, and the approval workflow is helpful. However, it really isn't intended as a mechanism to handle AP invoice approval workflow. There is another module coming for Billing Management that will have that functionality. I believe that it is slightly delayed from Blackbaud due to the pandemic, and it is still a year away.


I share this only because I've seen all of the Expense Managment activity in the Community, and it seems like more people are trying to hijack that tool for AP than for its intended purpose, and the results are often disappointing. Now that I know where AP fits into thiings, that really helped me see the intended purpose of Expense Management.

Karen Edwards

Geoffrey, thank you for your post on Expense Management. I had always thought that Expense mgmt was primarily for reimbursemenrts, but it was nice to have that confirmed. I am disappointed to learn that the true AP approval process is a year away. We are using the web portal for this function, and it has worked well for us, but I am looking forward to an upgrade and one less site to use.

Angela Tuttle

I have Expense Manager set up but we have not been using it, good to know it works best for employee reimbursements since I would like to run all of our AP through it. Glad that there is another platform in the works!


We purchased Expense Manager for the Credit Card piece but unfortunately it does not work currently with our bank, BB&T/Truist. Fingers crossed the connection will be available soon!


Since COVID we have started allowing electronic submission of check requests and invoices but we are looking for another option.

Kelsey Emerick

Hi Geoffrey Goodfellow,

How come it doesn't work for normal AP? We are in the middle of setting up our live database right now and plan to use expense management to process our AP. Our reoccurring expenses like internet, phone, garbage and things like that will still run through our main AP person and be entered through the Payables module rather than the Expense Management module but anytime our program staff makes a purchase with a company credit card or makes a purchase at a local business that we have an account with we will have them submit the expense through the "My Credit Cards transactions" area or the "my invoice requests" area respectively and they will attach a copy of the receipt or invoice when doing so. We tested this feature fairly extensively in our test database but would like to know more about the issues you see with it.

Thank You,

Kelsey Davis

Senior Accountant & Accounting Systems Manager

Human Resource Development Council Dist IX

Geoffrey Goodfellow

Hi, Kelsey.


You may actually be more up to date with what Expense Management is able to offer since I last looked at it earlier this academic year. If there is a Blackbaud Employee that could weigh in on this Community thread, that would be great because I would hate to steer you wrong!


To be clear, we are currently not users of Expense Management, but these were some of the concerns when we last investigated.

• The Expense Managmement module didn't seem directly connect to Accounts Payable. It wouldn't pull up the default vendor profile for payment terms, G/L distributions, etc.). The description line on the invoice was defaulting to the expense category which wasn't very descriptive in the G/L. Any A/P distributions put in by our A/P staff were over-written by staff coding.
• Every line item distribution became a separate invoice in A/P, so if you have invoices that get distributed across many accounts, there were a lot of invoices to manage.
• The multiple approval workflow didn't seem to be available in Accounts Payable. There was no way for anyone other than the person who submitted the invoice for approval to see the status of the invoice.
• The system didn't seem to check for duplicate invoices like A/P does.

Perhaps some of these items have are now included, so if you have tested and seen things working for you, that is great. Perhaps I need to investigate it again.

Wendy Croker

Hi Geoffrey Goodfellow


Thank you for sharing your concerns, we are looking at adding Expense Management and would find those same issues a concern. I would also appreciate hearing from someone at Blackbaud or a current user to find out if there are any solutions for these points. It would be frustrating to find out after investing in the module and training that it didn't work the way we envisioned.


We also have many invoices that are distributed across multiple accounts, it would be cumbersome to have them all show up as separate invoices. My guess is that it allows for different approvals for the different accounts but that doesn't seem efficient.


I've heard other people say that invoices get held up in the system if someone hasn't approved them. There must be some way to see what they are so they can be followed up on - a report or a dashboard?


Wendy

Wendy Croker

I just read a post in another thread on Expense Management that might be helpful. I'm going to check out the e-Learning link after our external audit is finished.

Thread name: Sharing FE Expense Management - helps with remote working

Katherine Liles

Thanks so much for sharing, Bill! I'm glad to hear that the Expense Management functionality is working out so well for your organization (especially, how it is coming in handy during these strange times!).


I can see there are a few follow up questions in regards to how Expense Management works. For those of you looking to see the process from beginning to end, I wanted to share that we have an eLearning you can take to see the entire functionality. You can launch the e-Learning from this link >> https://blackbaud.csod.com/LMS/LoDetails/DetailsLo.aspx?loid=b3f9f85f-0070-4c59-aa89-2cdc977a2384#t=1

We recently made our eLearnings accessible to all users(!!) and you can take them at any time - usually it takes about 30 minutes to complete.

Narciza Loja

Hi Kim,


It seems that you have been using expense management for a while.. I would like to know if there is any report that we can run for expense management in AP to know who approve?

is there such a nice report or there is no way for us to know unless we go to the invoice itself.


Hope you can help.


Narciza