Approving and Disputing Invoice Lines

This chapter provides an overview of the line-level approval and dispute process and discusses how to:

• Navigate line-level approval.

• Set up line-level approval rules.

• Review, approve, and dispute invoice lines.

Understanding Line-Level Approval and Dispute

Depending on the structure of your organization and the degree of control over expenditures you require, line-level approval can expedite the payment process and thus enhance your relationships with your suppliers. Since many organizations contend with processing consolidated invoices that encompass purchases made across multiple departments within the organization, line-level approvals enable your approvers to easily manage the invoice lines directly related to their purchases.

You can designate particular users in your organization and enable them to approve and dispute individual invoice lines. A single line can be routed to one or more approvers, depending upon the rules you establish for your buying organization.

Line-level routing occurs in parallel with header approval—if both are enabled—such that one level does not have to complete before the other commences.

Whether lines are routed for approval or not, if at least one non-operational role is assigned to a user, that user can see all the lines and their ChartFields. If the line is not routed for approval, the line approval button does not appear. Just as for operational users, line approval status identifies which users are pending and which users have already approved the line. All lines of a given invoice must be approved before the invoice can be paid.

Those users assigned a buyer accountant role type have override capabilities. They can approve lines and resolve disputes for invoice lines to expedite payments.

Navigating Line-Level Approval

The My Invoice Lines page enables operational users to navigate quickly to their tasks.

If the user logging in has only operational role types assigned, upon login the system transfers this user directly to the My Invoice Lines page, and neither the Invoices component nor the Payments component is available.

Note. An operational user is a user assigned to a role that is an operational approver role type. Operational users can alternately select eSettlements, Invoices, Review Invoices to review invoice lines.

This section discusses how to navigate with the My Invoice Lines page.

Page Used to Navigate Line-Level Approval

Navigating with the My Invoice Lines Page

Access the My Invoice Lines page (eSettlements, My Invoice Lines, My Invoice Lines).

Click a link to access your invoice lines awaiting dispute resolution, having match exceptions, or requiring your approval.

Setting Up Line-Level Approval Rules

At the buyer registration level you identify which fields will trigger line-level approval and then associate a role to each field. The role you associate is responsible for approving the lines. Next, on the buyer user profile you must assign those users responsible for approving lines the same role as at the buyer registration level, and assign the specific field values for which they are responsible (such as item ID 10000). In the case where a user is defined as the department manager in the Department table (DEPT_TBL) or the project manager for a project (PROJECT_MGR), then the department or project values where the user has been defined as a manager will automatically populate for the user.

In these cases, the user does not need to belong to the role defined at buyer registration (if one was set up) for the department or project.

For the auto-population to occur, the buyer user must have been defined as the department manager or project manager before the Department or Project field was defined at the buyer registration. As with all the line-level approval fields defined on the buyer user profile (those appearing by default and those entered manually), you can disable a particular line approval rule by deselecting the appropriate Use check box on the Review User Profiles - Invoice Line Approval Rule Setup page.

Line-level approval setup is a two-step process the buyer administrator performs:

1. At the buyer level (for example, BUY01), you specify which fields are to be routed for approval, such as account or department.

   You can specify any active distribution ChartField, item ID, or item category.

2. At the user level, you specify which value the operational users (for example, OPUSER) can approve (for example, account 650000 or department 14000).

   You can define values for any field specified in step 1.

See Also

Administering Self-Service Security and Creating New Users

Defining Invoice Line Approval Rules

Reviewing, Approving, and Disputing Invoice Lines

Once your setup is complete, operational approvers can review, approve, and dispute individual invoice lines. These users cannot view invoice lines for which they are not responsible.

Most operational users do not have authority to override exceptions, however it's useful for them to see the reasons why invoice lines have a match exception status. Operational users that do have override authority can view and override exceptions.

Warning! Ensure that work in progress invoice lines are approved before turning off line-level approval routing. Similarly, if you need to change header approval amount levels or turn off header approval, ensure that you complete the approval of work in progress invoices before doing so.

See Also

Defining Payables User Preferences

Pages Used to Review, Approve, and Dispute Invoice Lines

Reviewing Invoice Lines

Access the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page (click the Review Disputes, Review Exceptions, or Review Pending Approvals link on the My Invoice Lines page).

Invoice, Buyer, and Supplier	Enter a selection to narrow your search, but none are required. If you enter a value in the Buyer or Supplier field, searches return results faster.
Invoice Status	Populates according to the link you click on the My Invoice Lines page and defines the invoices that display. For example, if you click the Review Disputes link to access this page, the Invoice Status is set to Disputed Invoice Line. You can change the status: Disputed Invoice Line. Invoice Line Exceptions. My Pending Lines. No Disputes. Pending Approval.
Payment Status	Displays Unpaid invoices only.

Invoice Lines and Distributions

Routing Fields and ChartFields

This tab displays information associated with the given invoice line.

GL Chart

This tab displays ChartFields associated with the given invoice line.

Previewing and Approving Invoice Lines

Access the Review Invoice Lines - Approve page (select the Sel (select) check box for any invoice line you want to approve on the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page).

Note. You must select My Pending Lines as the Invoice Status before you can approve your lines.

Review and ensure that the lines selected are those you want to approve, and then click the Approve button to approve the lines. If you decide that you do not want to approve one or more of the lines, deselect the Select check boxes for those lines before continuing.

When you click Approve from this page and then the OK button after the confirmation, the selected lines are approved and the system returns you to the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page.

Previewing and Disputing Invoice Lines

Access the Review Invoice Lines - Dispute page (select the Sel (select) check box for any invoice line you want to dispute on the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page).

Review and ensure that the lines selected are those you want to dispute, and then click the Save and Notify Now button to put the lines on hold and notify users set up to receive Invoice Line Dispute notifications.

Click the Save and Notify Later button to dispute the lines and have email notifications sent to the supplier users when the system administrator runs the Notifications-Disputed Lines Application Engine process (EM_NOTIFLATR).

See Also

Resolving Invoice Line Disputes

Viewing and Overriding Match Exceptions

Access the Match Exception Workbench Details page (click a button in the Match column on the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page).

Unless the user is set up to override match exceptions, the fields on this page will be unavailable. Some objects on this page are hidden if an operational user does not have override authority.

For approval to occur, these exceptions must first be resolved by a user who has override authority.

See Also

Defining Payables User Preferences

Reviewing Match Exceptions

Administering Self-Service Security and Creating New Users

Resolving Invoice Line Disputes

Access the Review Invoice Lines - Resolve Invoice Line Dispute page (click a Dispute button on the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page).

Note. You can dispute lines all together, but must resolve them one at a time.

Viewing Dispute History

Access the Review Invoice Lines - Resolution History page (click a Resolution History button on the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page).

This page displays all dispute and comment information associated with the invoice line.

Viewing Invoice Status

Access the Review Invoices - Invoice Cycle page (click a link in the Invoice column on the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page).

View the status of the invoice within the life cycle.

Note. An additional button for invoice line approval appears on this page only for invoices subject to line-level approval. If the button is not present, the invoice had no lines routed.

See Also

Reviewing Disputes in the Invoice Cycle

Reviewing Line Approval Status

Access the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Line Approval Status page (click a button in the Appr (approval) column on the Review Invoice Lines - Invoice Lines and Distributions page).

All approvers must approve a given invoice line before it can be paid. Once an approver has approved an invoice line, the pending status row no longer appears on the page, but it is still stored in the database.

Users with the buyer accountant role type can override operational approvers and approve their lines. When this occurs, a line for the buyer accountant user appears on this page and all operational user lines that were pending become approved.