Filing and Bookkeeping Approval

Beside payment approval there are two further checkpoints you can switch on. Each is a per-workspace setting and both are off by default. Until you switch one on, the app behaves exactly as it does today.

What each checkpoint certifies

Filing approval: the document is here, complete, and correctly read. The PDF and the NAV record, the right company, not a duplicate, the extracted numbers checked. Typically the client's finance admin gives it.

Bookkeeping approval: the coding is right. Categories, VAT codes, GL codes, the mandatory category lists. An accountant gives it.

The third one, payment approval, means something else entirely: that the invoice may be paid. That is the client's cash decision. Three different questions, so the app keeps them apart.

Switching one on

Open the workspace, go to Settings, then Approval rules. The Checkpoints section is at the top. Only people holding "Manage approvals" see this page.

The switch does not turn on straight away. A dialog asks for a start date and tells you how many invoices will go into the queue and how many older ones stay out. That is deliberate: a larger workspace can hold close to twenty thousand older invoices, and letting them all in at once would create a queue nobody would ever work through.

The start date is final. Invoices before it never enter the queue, not even later. If you want them, switch the checkpoint off and on again with an earlier date.

The two queues

Approvers find their queue under Approvals in the sidebar. The Filing and Bookkeeping tabs appear only for someone who holds that permission in a workspace where the checkpoint is on.

Every invoice is a card with its partner, summary and gross amount, and amber markers for whatever is still open on that invoice: a missing VAT code, an uncategorised line, extracted data to check. You can work the queue without opening each invoice. To look at one, click its partner name at the top of the card: the invoice opens in a preview over the queue, where Approve (when nothing is blocking) and Return work as on the card. See Approving invoices for payment.

Above the list, All shows every invoice with the total, and three filters split it:

• Ready: nothing open, it can be approved.
• Blocked: something open is refusing the approval.
• Returned: somebody sent it back with a note.

An invoice is always in exactly one of the three, so the three numbers add up to the total.

Approving and returning

A card shows Approve only when nothing is blocking. A blocked card says how many items are still open instead. Approving stamps the card with a green Approved and it leaves the list. You can approve many at once: filter to Ready, select them all, and confirm once.

Return asks why on the card itself, with three quick reasons for that checkpoint, and the note is required. The card is stamped Sent back in amber and leaves the list. The invoice comes back on the queue under Returned with the note on its card. There is no separate recipient: the queue is the recipient.

When somebody edits the invoice

If anyone changes the amount, one of the dates, the partner, the company, or any line's category or VAT code on an approved invoice, the bookkeeping approval is withdrawn automatically. The invoice returns to the queue, and the timeline records what changed and to what.

That is deliberate. Bookkeeping approval is a statement about what goes into the export. If the data changed, the earlier approval was about a different invoice.

The filing approval is withdrawn the same way when the amount, the issue, delivery or due date, the partner, the company, the currency or the direction changes, and also when the extraction flags an already filed invoice needs review again. Filing says the document was read correctly, and a new low-confidence reading contradicts that. So the invoice goes back to the filing queue, where approving it also clears the flag.

For the same reason, the automatic overnight re-categorisation leaves bookkeeping-approved invoices alone. If an accountant explicitly asks for a re-run, it runs and withdraws the approval. That is correct: they asked for it.

Chaining

Two more switches appear: the first once filing is on, the second once filing and bookkeeping are both on.

• Filing before payment: an invoice with no filing approval never reaches a payment approver.
• Filing before bookkeeping: bookkeeping approval waits for filing approval.

Both are on by default, and both can be switched off if the two checkpoints run independently.

A third switch appears once bookkeeping is on:

• Bookkeeping before payment: an invoice with no bookkeeping approval never reaches a payment approver.

This one is off by default. Paying and booking answer different questions, and most offices pay on the due date and book later, so waiting for bookkeeping can delay payments. Switch it on where the accountant has to see the coding before money leaves. With Filing before bookkeeping also on, payment then waits for filing too, even with Filing before payment off.

The switches hold at the moment of approval, not only when an invoice enters a queue. An invoice already waiting in the payment queue shows Waiting for filing (or Waiting for bookkeeping) instead of Approve until that approval is given; it can still be declined. Filing before bookkeeping works the same way in the bookkeeping queue. Invoices created before a checkpoint's start date are outside that checkpoint and are never held back by it. Approvals given before a switch was turned on stay as they are.

Decisions

The Decisions link sits at the top right of the Approvals section. Every decision on all three checkpoints lands there as one row, grouped by day, newest first: the time, who decided, the invoice, its amount and what it is waiting for now. A note appears under its row. Later decisions on the same invoice on the same day follow as shorter rows under the first. Click a row to open the invoice preview.

The list shows decisions people made. Invoices that need no payment approval, because no rule asks for one, are also recorded as decisions, in the system's name. Tick Include the system's decisions to see those too; the number beside it says how many there are.

To open this list you need "View invoices and bank transactions" and at least one of "Approve invoices for payment", "Manage approvals", or the permission of a checkpoint that is switched on ("Approve filing", "Approve bookkeeping"). It is a record of what happened, so deciding at one checkpoint is enough to see the decisions of all of them.

When somebody edits an invoice, the withdrawn approval appears there too, in the system's name. So "where did my approval go" is answered by the list before anyone has to ask.

On the invoice

The Approvals card on the invoice shows all three checkpoints in the order the invoice passes them, with who signed and when. In the invoice list an amber marker shows when an invoice is still waiting for a checkpoint, and you can filter on it.

Emails

Filing and bookkeeping approvers get the same two emails as payment approvers, each with its own switch under Account, Notifications, in the Approvals section:

• New items to approve: when a wave of invoices becomes ready, or is returned, in a queue you hold the key for, one email once the wave ends (the queue has been quiet for 5 minutes, or the oldest unsent item has waited 30 minutes). Filing and bookkeeping items appear as counts per company with a button to the queue, not as a list of invoices.
• Daily digest: on working days at the time you choose (08:00 Budapest time by default), the counts of ready, returned with a note, and blocked items per company, with a button to the queue. Nothing waiting, no email. Items that are only blocked do not trigger it.

The Due-soon reminder is for payment only: filing and bookkeeping have no due date. Nothing is sent for a checkpoint that is switched off. Every email in detail, and how to change the times: Approving invoices for payment.

Permissions

Two new permissions under Settings, Team management:

• Approve filing: can be given to a client-side member, because the client's finance admin usually does the filing.
• Approve bookkeeping: firm side only. A client-side member cannot certify the coding.

Both also require "View invoices and bank transactions": nobody decides on a record they cannot see.