Understanding Invoice Approval

The Voucher Build process (AP_VCHRBLD) and the Voucher Approval Creation Application Engine process (EM_VO_APR_AE) triggers approval workflow, notifying the appropriate buyer approvers and adding the respective invoices to their summary worklist. Buyers then view their summary worklist from their dashboard page and approve invoices.

According to the security established, buyer approvers are presented only with those invoices for their associated business units and the monetary amounts specified during buyer registration.

You also approve individual invoice lines. You can set up the system to route any invoice line to one or more approvers in your organization with whom the line is associated, and these approvers can also dispute invoice lines.

Information in this topic applies to both models (Buyer Direct and Business Service Provider), but there are a few issues to bear in mind when approving invoices in the Buyer Direct model:

  • You must run the Voucher Approval Creation process in PeopleSoft eSettlements to record the approval history when using Virtual Approver or when using Approval Framework and the voucher was not eligible when processed by the Voucher Build process (AP_VCHRBLD).

  • If an approver approves or partially approves an invoice in PeopleSoft eSettlements—according to the buyer's monetary level approval requirements—and then changes are made to any of the following fields using the voucher entry pages in PeopleSoft Payables, the invoice will require reapproval.

    When changes are made to any of these fields in PeopleSoft Payables for a particular voucher and using Virtual Approver, a temporary table (EM_VOAPRDAT_TAO) is populated with the voucher information. This table is then used to indicate which vouchers require reapproval.

    • Invoice ID.

    • Invoice Date.

    • Supplier ID.

    • Voucher Gross Amount.

    • Sales Tax Amount.

    • VAT Amount.

    • Freight Amount.

    • Miscellaneous Charges Amount.

    • Transaction Currency.

    • Payment Terms.

Email notifications alert approvers that voucher reapproval is pending. During the Voucher Approval Creation process, the system compares any vouchers that are in the temporary table with the vouchers that need to undergo approval. If a match is found, the system sends a reapproval email notification to the approver (as opposed to an initial approval email notification) because at that point it is actually the second time the approver must approve the voucher.