Adaptive supports two approval stages for bills: Bill approval and Payment approval. Bill approval confirms the bill itself. Payment approval adds a separate review before the bill is ready to be paid.
Use payment approval when your team wants one group to review the bill and another group to authorize payment.
1. Understand the Bills Tabs
The Bills page tracks bills through each stage:
Inbox: Draft bills that were uploaded, created, or imported from email
For approval: Bills waiting for bill approval
For payment approval: Bills waiting for payment approval before they can be paid
Ready to pay: Bills that have completed required approvals and are ready for payment
All: All bills, including bills across approval and payment statuses
Note: The For payment approval tab only appears when payment approvals are enabled for your company.
2. How Bill Approval and Payment Approval Work Together
Bills move through approval stages based on the workflows that apply to them.
If a Bill approval workflow applies, the bill moves to For approval
After bill approval is complete, Adaptive checks whether a Payment approval workflow applies
If a payment approval workflow applies, the bill moves to For payment approval
After payment approval is complete, the bill moves to Ready to pay
If no payment approval workflow applies, the bill moves directly from For approval to Ready to pay
If your team only needs one approval step, do not create a payment approval workflow. Bills will skip the payment approval stage once bill approval is complete.
3. Create a Payment Approval Workflow
To set up payment approval:
Go to Automations
Open the Approvals tab
Click Add workflow
In Applies to, select Bills
In Approval stage, select Payment approval
Add the conditions that should require payment approval
Add the approvers for the workflow
Click Save
4. Configure Workflow Conditions
Conditions determine which bills require payment approval.
Available bill workflow conditions can include:
Amount
Cost code
Job
Vendor
Vendor type
Account
Budget
Linked PO
Your QuickBooks class field, if enabled for your company
Use conditions to route higher-risk bills, specific vendors, specific jobs, or bills linked to purchase orders through payment approval.
5. Choose Approvers
Approvers determine who can approve a bill at the payment approval stage.
When setting up the workflow, choose the people or roles who should approve matching bills. You can configure whether the workflow requires all selected approvers, either approver, or auto-approval depending on your approval setup.
6. Review Payment Approval on a Bill
Open a bill to review which workflows apply.
The bill approval section can show separate approval areas for:
Bill approval
Payment approval
From the bill, approvers can click Approve when it is their turn. If a bill is in For payment approval, approving it moves the bill to Ready to pay.
If a payment approver rejects the bill, the bill returns to Inbox with the rejection comment.
7. Bypass Approvals
Users with permission to bypass approval workflows may see Bypass approvals or Bypass other approvals.
Bypassing approvals approves the bill without waiting for the remaining approvers in the workflow.
Important: Use bypass only when an administrator intentionally wants to override the configured approval controls.
8. Revert a Bill to Payment Approval
If payment approvals are enabled, a bill in Ready to pay can be moved back to Payment approval when it needs another payment review.
To do this, open the bill actions menu and select Revert to payment approval.
If you have any questions that our Knowledge Base resources aren't able to help you with, please reach out to us directly at [email protected]!