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Approval is a separate axis from everything else in Financials. An invoice’s status records whether it has been paid. Its approval records whether anyone authorized paying it. The two are independent facts about the same invoice.

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The Rule

Money cannot move on an unapproved invoice. An invoice must be approved before a payment can be recorded against it.

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Approval Is Usually Implicit

When a user with authority to approve an invoice records a payment against it, the app approves it as part of the same action. The approval is implied by the authority; no separate step is required. Approvals become visible in two situations:
  • The user lacks authority. The payment is refused, and the invoice stays unapproved until someone with authority approves it.
  • Approval and payment are done by different people. One person reviews and approves; another records the payment later.
For that second case, approval is also an explicit action: open an invoice and approve it, or select several in a listing and use Actions → Approve.
Full Update Invoice page for INV-339460-693 with the Actions menu open to Edit, Approve, Revert All Payments, and Void, plus its Owed status and line-item total

An open Owed invoice exposes Approve under Actions next to its Not Approved badge and line-item balance.

In the listing, Owed and Owed · Approved make the two axes visible side by side. Selecting an unapproved row enables Actions → Approve without changing the invoice’s payment-derived status.
Full company-wide invoice list with an unapproved Owed invoice selected, the Actions menu showing Approve, and complete Owed · Approved and Partially Paid statuses visible in neighboring rows

Approve is an explicit bulk action, while the Status column distinguishes Owed from Owed · Approved.

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Approval Is Irrevocable Once Money Has Moved

Approval can be revoked — but only while the invoice is still unpaid. Once any payment has been recorded, the approval that authorized it cannot be taken back. Un-approving such an invoice requires removing its payments first, which returns it to Owed, and then revoking.
  • Approval is only ever removed deliberately. Nothing clears an approval as a side effect. Removing a paid invoice’s payments returns it to Owed and leaves it approved — it simply becomes revocable again. Leaving it unapproved requires a second, explicit step.
  • Editing an invoice does not reset its approval. What was approved — the type and the line item amounts — cannot change after creation, so an edit cannot change what was approved.
  • Approval is not part of the status. A Paid invoice is always approved, because money moved. An Owed invoice may be approved or not, and both are normal — the listing writes the approved case as Owed · Approved, the one place the two axes are shown together.
Approval is therefore asymmetric: it arrives implicitly, as a side effect of an authorized user recording a payment, and it leaves only on explicit request. That asymmetry ensures an approval is never lost by accident while the invoice is being worked on.

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Configuring Approval Authority

Approval authority is set under Admin → Financials Configuration → Approvals. The Approvals configuration page shows how to create roles and assign company users to them. By default there are no custom rules, which means everyone can approve anything. This is the default before approvals are configured, and it is appropriate for a small team. Enabling custom rules narrows it. There are two parts:
1

Define roles

A role is a named level of authority. Each role sets a per-invoice-type ceiling — the largest amount someone with that role may approve on that type.
  • A type with a ceiling of, say, $5,000 → invoices up to $5,000.
  • A type with no limit → any amount.
  • A type set to $0, or not listed on the role at all → the role cannot approve that type at all.
There is also a built-in Financial Administrator role: unlimited authority over every Invoice Type, including types created later.
2

List approvers

Select a specific user from the company’s user directory and assign that person one role. Repeat this for each approver: different users can hold different roles, and each person’s authority comes from the limits on their assigned role. Anyone not on the list has no approval authority.See the Approvals configuration page for the setup details and an example with different roles assigned to different users.
A custom role denies any Invoice Type it does not explicitly name. When a new Invoice Type is added, existing custom roles cannot approve it until granted authority — while Financial Administrators can approve it immediately. This is deliberate: new types start locked down.

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API and Integration Callers

An invoice paid through the external API follows the same rule, resolved differently. A machine caller’s authority is its API key’s payment-approve permission — nothing else. Approval roles are matched by a person’s email address, which a machine caller does not have, so the company’s custom rules are never consulted for API traffic. A key with the permission auto-approves on payment, exactly as an authorized person does.