Approvals sit at the heart of every finance operation – but in many organisations, PO and invoice approvals are still managed through emails, spreadsheets and ad hoc processes. That creates delays, bottlenecks, weak audit trails and approval risk.

This webinar introduces AccountsIQ’s new workflow approval engine and shows how you can use it to build automated, highly configurable approval workflows that reflect how your business actually works.

Hosted by Sinead Brennan and Ellen, this session is aimed at existing AccountsIQ customers and finance teams evaluating the platform’s approval and control capabilities.

You’ll see how the workflow engine helps you:

• Automate approvals for purchase orders, purchase invoices and employee expenses
• Customise multi-step workflows for different document types and thresholds
• Improve compliance and auditability with clear approval histories and status tracking
• Give budget holders real-time visibility over budget vs actuals when they approve
• Gradually transition from the old approval engine to the new one with no disruption

All of this is shown live inside AccountsIQ’s new navigation (new nav), where the new approval engine is built and managed.

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1. How the new workflow approval engine fits into AccountsIQ

Sinead starts by explaining the context and goals behind the new engine:

• Approvals are critical but often manual, slow and inconsistent
• Every customer’s approval process is different, so workflows needed to be:
  • Highly customisable
  • Easy to configure by finance teams
  • Fully integrated into AccountsIQ’s new nav

You’ll see the three common starting points for existing customers:

1. You don’t see the approval engine yet
   • The feature needs to be enabled on your account (often via a partner)
   • Admins can contact AccountsIQ support to switch it on
2. You’re using the old approval engine
   • Old and new engines can coexist during transition
   • You keep using the old engine while you design, test and refine new workflows
3. You’ve never used approvals before
   • You can start directly on the new workflow engine and build from a clean slate

2. First steps: approval settings and in-product guidance

The session walks through the setup sequence in new nav:

• Approval settings
  • Enable approvals for:
    • Purchase orders (POs)
    • Purchase invoices (PIs)
  • Control how and where approvals apply
• In-product help & guidance
  • “Guide me” tours for getting started
  • Embedded video guides and help articles opened directly from the setup screen
  • Info icons on key fields explaining:
    • What each option does
    • When you should enable it

This product-led approach makes it easier for finance teams to self-implement workflows without needing a separate implementation project.

3. Setting up approvers and budget holders

Ellen demonstrates how approvers are configured:

• Approvers must be system users (finance or business users), but:
  • They don’t have to log in to approve – they can still approve via email
• For each approver you can define:
  • Job title
  • Whether they are a budget holder
  • Whether they have a substitute approver (e.g. during annual leave)
  • Whether they use email or mobile app for approvals
  • A designated approver to prevent users approving their own documents

Budget holders see extra budget information in their approval emails, including:

• Budget year to date
• Actual spend year to date
• Committed spend (e.g. outstanding POs)
• Available balance after approving the document

This gives approvers better context and supports stronger spend control.

You’ll also see:

• How to activate / deactivate approvers
• How to edit approver details
• How to view which workflows a given approver is used in via “Show associated workflows”

4. Building multi-step approval workflows

The core of the session is a live build of example workflows.

You’ll see how to:

Choose the process

Each workflow is created for a specific process:

• Purchase Orders (PO)
• PO Invoices (invoices matched to POs)
• Non-PO Invoices / Direct PIs
• Employee expenses (with employee-based routing)

Each process has its own workflow(s) to reflect different rules.

Set auto-approval and re-approval rules

At the top of each workflow, you can define:

• Auto approval threshold
  • e.g. “Auto-approve PIs under £100”
• Re-approval rules for edits
  • Based on net, gross or percentage change
  • e.g. if an invoice is edited by more than £100 or 5%, send it back for re-approval

Create approval steps and thresholds

Ellen builds a multi-level workflow for direct purchase invoices, including:

• Step 1 – Department / project approval
  • Invoices above £1,000 routed to the relevant head of department based on dimension/BI code (e.g. project)
  • A finance user also approves for coding correctness
• Step 2 – CFO approval
  • Invoices above a second threshold (e.g. £20,000) routed to the CFO
• Step 3 – CEO approval
  • Invoices above a higher threshold (e.g. £50,000) routed to the CEO

For each step, you can choose:

• Approval limits (from / to values)
• Approval basis:
  • Dimensions (projects, departments, locations, etc.)
  • BI codes
  • GL codes
  • Suppliers
• Decision mode:
  • All must approve (within limits)
  • Any can approve (first response wins)
  • Select when processing document

Workflows can be saved as Draft while you refine them, then activated when ready.

5. Activating the new engine and handling the transition

Sinead explains what happens when you activate your first workflow:

• Activation of the first workflow switches the database onto the new engine
• Old approval options and screens are removed from that entity
• Documents “in transit” are:
  • Given a new status (e.g. Action required)
  • Re-routed through the new engine based on the new rules
• All approval requests go through the new workflow engine from that point onwards

This design allows you to:

• Build and test workflows while still relying on the old engine
• Switch over once you’re ready, with a controlled and predictable transition

6. Real-time status tracking, metro map and audit history

Inside the document listings, users can see:

• Status at a glance:
  • Admin required
  • Action required
  • Awaiting approval
  • Approved
• Metro map view:
  • Shows which step a document is in
  • Shows who has approved, who it’s with now, and what steps come next
• Export history:
  • CSV/Excel export of the full approval journey
  • When it entered the engine
  • Who approved and when
  • Edits and re-approvals

This gives finance teams a clear audit trail and helps resolve queries quickly.

7. Employee expense approvals

The webinar also covers employee expense workflows, which are a special case:

• Employee-based workflows are only available for non-PO invoice processes
• Each employee is linked to a default approver (e.g. line manager)
• Example workflow shown:
  • Step 1 – Head of department and finance check every claim
  • Step 2 – Finance director approves only if the claim exceeds a set limit

You’ll see how the system automatically routes:

• Smaller claims through Step 1 only
• Larger claims through both Step 1 and Step 2

8. Upcoming features: approval reminders and automation

During the Q&A, Sinead and Ellen also talk about what’s coming next:

• Approval reminders via the automation engine
  • Schedule reminders to approvers if documents sit too long without action
  • Control reminder frequency (daily, weekly, specific times)
• Future enhancements such as:
  • PO auto-emailing to suppliers when POs are approved/edited/cancelled
  • Extended AP Inbox controls (e.g. multiline extraction per supplier)
  • Reports to identify slow approvers and outstanding approvals

These build on the same automation framework that underpins the workflow engine.

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What is the AccountsIQ workflow approval engine?
It’s a configurable approval framework inside AccountsIQ that lets you automate approvals for purchase orders, purchase invoices and employee expenses using multi-step workflows, thresholds and routing rules based on dimensions, BI codes, suppliers or GL codes.

Can the new workflow engine coexist with the old approval engine?
Yes. You can design and test workflows in the new engine while continuing to use the old one. Once you activate your first workflow, the new engine takes over and the old approval options are removed for that entity.

Do approvers have to be system users?
Approvers are configured as system users so they can be referenced in workflows and controls, but they don’t have to log in if they don’t want to. They can approve documents via email links or the mobile app.

Can I route approvals based on departments, projects or BI codes?
Yes. Workflows can route documents using dimensions (e.g. department, project, location), BI codes, suppliers and GL codes. This makes it easy to send different documents to different approvers depending on what they relate to.

How do budget holders see their budget position when approving?
If an approver is marked as a budget holder, their approval email includes key budget information such as annual budget, year-to-date spend, committed spend and remaining balance for the relevant codes.

Will the engine support approval reminders and escalations?
Yes. Approval reminders are on the roadmap and will be driven through the automation engine, allowing you to remind approvers automatically if documents sit with them for too long, and to schedule reminders at defined intervals.

Does the workflow engine support employee expenses?
Yes. You can build employee-based workflows for expenses, routing claims to the correct line manager, finance reviewer and senior approvers based on employee setup and claim value.

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