This article explains how to initiate and navigate the bill approval process in Relay. To initiate an approval process, you must first have approval rules set up in Relay. Click here for a detailed walkthrough of setting up approval rules.
Sections in this article
- Submitting bills for approval
- Checking bill approval status
- Sending approval reminders
- Approving bills
Submitting Bills for Approval
Bills are not automatically submitted for approval; an approval process must be manually initiated by a user with permission to pay bills.
For more details on permission levels, please see this article.
- To initiate an approval process for a bill, navigate to Payments > Unpaid Bills.
- All unpaid bills are listed in the left-hand panel of the Action Items screen. Bills that have not yet been submitted for approval have the status “Unpaid.” The status of the bill appears under the name of the billing company.
You can filter for bills that have not yet been submitted for approval by clicking Filter from the top of the bills list, then selecting Unpaid.
- To submit a bill for approval, click Submit For Approval from the top-right corner of the selected bill. An email notification will be sent to all approvers required for the first approval step. The status for that bill will change to Awaiting Approval.
- If the approval process includes multiple steps, the approvers on subsequent steps will automatically be emailed once the previous step has been completed.
Checking Bill Approval Status
- Navigate to Payments in the left-side panel, then click Awaiting Approval. This will take you to a view of your bills filtered on bills Awaiting Approval.
- Select a bill that is Awaiting Approval from the list on the left side of the Action Items screen. The Approval information section shows the approval steps required for the bill to be approved. The current step is highlighted orange.
Sending Approval Reminders
- Navigate to bills that are Awaiting Approval by clicking Payments > Awaiting Approval.
- Select a bill, then click Send Reminder. An email notification will be sent to all team members whose approval is requested for the current step of the approval process.
Approving Bills
- Navigate to the bill requiring your approval. You can access the bill directly from the email notification requesting approval, or by navigating to Payments > Awaiting Approval, then selecting the bill from the list.
- Click Approve to approve the bill. Click Reject to reject the bill. The user who submitted the bill for approval will receive a notification that the bill was rejected.
Once all approvals stages have been completed, the bill can be paid by clicking Initiate Payment in the top-right corner of the bill. Click here for more detail on how to pay bills.