Invoice review, approval and export

Ask five questions about the same invoice

A supplier invoice carries several kinds of work. Someone needs to check what the document says, decide how it belongs in the books, provide any required business sign-off and complete the accounting handover. Payment is a further process.

One person may perform several of these jobs. They are still different questions, and a successful answer to one does not automatically answer the others. Use the framework below to agree responsibilities, then configure the actual access each person needs.

• Source-data review: do the captured values match the document?
• Accounting review: is the treatment appropriate for the books?
• Business approval: has the responsible person signed off the invoice?
• Export: has the prepared information reached the accounting destination?
• Payment: has the separate payment process been completed?

Take an equipment invoice through the questions

Imagine an invoice for a monitor and installation. First, compare the captured supplier, date, descriptions and amounts with the original. This checks the data. It does not decide the account code or confirm that the purchase was authorised.

Next, the person responsible for the books chooses or checks the accounting treatment. Saved rules may supply values, but a new or unusual purchase still needs attention. The business approver can then make the decision assigned to them in the configured workflow.

After the required preparation and decisions, the invoice can follow the normal accounting export process. Check the result at that boundary. A completed approval stage alone does not establish that export succeeded, and an accounting-system record alone does not establish payment.

A completed stage is part of a configured workflow

Datamolino approval stages can require Any or All configured approvers. Any lets one configured approver complete the stage. All requires every configured approver in that stage. Additional stages can have their own requirements.

That distinction is useful when discussing responsibility. A manager's decision may complete one stage while another required stage remains. Describe the decision that has happened rather than treating every approval action as the end of the whole process.

Where a workflow uses Keep documents editable, authorised finance staff can finish coding after approval. Normal editing permissions and applicable locks still apply. This supports separate responsibilities, but it does not mean every approver can change every field at any time.

Know which export gate your process relies on

When approval is enabled, regular users' accounting export is gated by approval. Approved documents can then follow the normal export process or configured automatic export. This is a useful control, but the documented exceptions matter.

Administrators have a separate skip-and-export action. It does not create an approval record. Bulk file export is not blocked in the same way as regular accounting export. A process that relies on sign-off should therefore define who uses those actions and when.

A workflow that cannot assign an approver can place the document in an admin-only Exceptions state. An administrator must resolve the assignment or workflow issue using the available actions. An unassignable bill is not silently treated as approved.

Be precise about the record sent to Xero

With the audit-PDF setting enabled, Datamolino can send an approval record and coding overview to Xero with the invoice. This is a Xero-specific capability. Do not assume that every accounting integration receives the same attachment.

The record covers the current approval round. It is not a complete archive of every historical round, and it does not include document comments or rejection-note bodies. Keep those limits in mind when deciding what evidence your own process needs.

An approval PDF is also different from a payment record or two-way approval-status synchronisation. Explain what the attachment contains without treating it as proof of every later event.

Agree the owner before an invoice gets stuck

Choose who checks source values, who decides the coding, who provides business approval and who confirms the export. For a business working with an external accountant, make the handover between the two organisations explicit.

Then test the agreement with an ordinary invoice and an exception. Ask what happens if a detail is wrong, an approver cannot be assigned or someone needs an administrative action. A clear response to those cases makes the workflow useful beyond the easiest invoice.

Keep payment responsibilities in their own process. Datamolino invoice sign-off can be part of your preparation, but this workflow does not establish that a bill has been paid.