Approving an invoice is a business decision step that marks it as authorised for payment. The approval workflow helps organisations maintain control over their expenditures by ensuring proper authorisation before payment.
Note
It's important to understand that the "approve" action has nothing to do with whether the invoice reaches your Banqup space, or it is sent to your accountant and to integrations.
There is no action to prevent e-invoices coming into your Banqup space. If you receive an invoice with which you don't agree, you can still mark it as refused and request a credit note to the supplier.
For PDF invoices, there is a validation required (invoices in "Awaiting validation" status) but it is purely a data validation task after the OCR, not a business decision.
What happens when you approve an invoice?
The invoice becomes visible in the Outbound Payments as ready for payment.
How to approve invoices
To approve invoices in Banqup:
Navigate to Purchase Invoices
Select one or multiples invoices.
Click the Approve button.
Approving several invoices at once
Go to Purchase Invoices.
Select the invoices you want to approve.
Click the Approve button. A review window opens with the full list of selected invoices.
If any invoice has a validation error, it's flagged in the list. You have two options:
Click the remove icon next to a flagged invoice to take it out of the selection, then fix it separately later.
Remove any other invoice from the selection if you change your mind about approving it.
When the list contains only the invoices you want to approve, click Approve to confirm.
💡 Best practices
Review invoice details carefully before approval.
Monitor approved invoices through Outbound Payments.
External approval for purchase invoices
You can route Purchase Invoices to an external app for approval before they continue through your workflow. This gives you tighter control over which documents are allowed to move forward.
Turn External approval on or off for purchase documents in your Inbox app settings. You get a confirmation message when the setting is saved.
When it is on, a purchase invoice shows Awaiting external approval while the external app reviews it. Internal users cannot approve, refuse, or dispute it during this time.
When it is off (the default), invoices follow the normal internal flow and show Awaiting approval for internal review.
Note: External approval is off by default, so your existing workflows are unaffected until you turn it on.