Set the steps an invoice moves through before it is paid, who each step goes to, and whether an invoice has to agree with its purchase order before anyone can approve it.
Before you start
You need permission to manage company settings. Without it every field on this page is read-only and Save Changes is disabled.
Everything here applies to the whole company, not one project.
Steps
Open Company Settings, then the Invoices tab.
Under Project Assignees, name the kinds of reviewer you use.
Under Workflow, set each step's Status name, Color and Assignee.
Set Allowed Next Status on each step.
Click Add Status to add a step of your own.
Under Other Settings, turn on the extra date fields you want on invoices.
Under Invoice Match Enforcement, choose a Match Mode.
Choose an Enforcement if you turned matching on.
Click Save Changes.
The 4 steps you cannot remove
Every company has an unreviewed, an approved, a rejected and a posted step. Their default names are Unreviewed, Approved, Rejected and Posted. You can rename them, recolour them and change who they go to, but you cannot delete them. The unreviewed step is always shown first and the posted step always last, whatever order you arrange the rest in. Your own steps sit between them.
Step names have to be unique within your company.
Allowed Next Status
This is what a reviewer is offered when they open the Status list on an invoice. Anything you leave out is greyed out for them. A new company starts with the unreviewed step able to reach only approved and rejected, and the other 3 able to reach anything.
Assignees
Each step can name a person, or one of the Project Assignees you set up at the top of the page, so the invoice goes to that project's holder of that role. Choose Do not change assignee to leave the invoice with whoever already has it.
Invoice Match Enforcement
Match Mode decides what is checked:
None (disabled): nothing is checked. This is where a company starts.
Two-Way (PO ↔ Invoice): the invoice is checked against the purchase order.
Three-Way (PO ↔ Delivery ↔ Invoice): against the purchase order and the delivery records.
Enforcement decides what happens to an invoice that does not pass:
Warn — show warning, allow override: the reviewer is told, can approve anyway, and SubBase records that they did.
Block — require admin override to approve: the invoice cannot be approved until someone submits an override with a reason. The override is recorded with their name and the time.
Either way the check only bites at approval. Reviewers can still open, edit and save a flagged invoice, and its Match Status column says how far the check got.
Notes and limits
Renaming a step changes the filter chips and the Status column for everyone in the company, and any saved link that filters on the old name stops matching.
There is no limit on how many steps you can add.
Turning matching on does not check invoices that are already approved or posted.
Best practices
Set Allowed Next Status on every step before you save. A step with nothing allowed after it is a dead end: the reviewer's Status list will offer only the step the invoice is already in, and no one can move it on until an Admin comes back to this page.
Start on Warn and move to Block once the matching is behaving. On Warn a reviewer can get an invoice paid and you still get the record; on Block every flagged invoice waits for someone with override rights to be at a desk.
Put the default reviewer on the step rather than relying on people to assign by hand. Every invoice entering that step goes to whoever the step names, and Do not change assignee is how you deliberately leave it where it is.
If this doesn't work
Start a chat from the Messenger in the bottom-left of this page, or email help@subbase.io. Include the order or project number and what you expected to happen.