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Approvals Tab

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Written by Jessica Callaly

The Approvals Tab is where the approvals process starts.

Watch this video on the Approvals tab:

Lightyear has a 3 panel layout, and we will always refer to them as panel 1, 2 and 3 as below.

Panel 1 shows a list of the bills that are waiting to be approved.

Panel 2 shows the data extracted from the bill, the original email the bill arrived with, plus any notes that have been added to the bill. You can access these three levels of information via the three sub-tabs at the top of panel 2.

Panel 3 is a preview of the original bill.


Add notes to a bill

In the same way that you can add notes to paper bills you can add notes to bills in Lightyear. To add a note, go to the Note sub-tab on panel-3. Here you will also see notes that other people have added. Notes cannot be deleted from a bill and will remain on them forever.


Approve, dispute, or trash the bill

Your primary job is to move bills on from your intray, generally by either approving, disputing or trashin them.

Approve

When you approve a bill, it will clear from the Approvals tab and will move to the next tab. You will still be able to see those tabs, but you may not be able to edit the bills in them.

Ensure that all pending tasks in the Approvals tab are completed before attempting to approve a bill. Additionally, the Account field must be filled out as it is mandatory for approval.

📌 Note: If your company is using the Lightyear Inventory function and you want to send the bill to inventory, you need to 'Add to Inventory' before approving it.

Dispute

When you dispute a bill, by selecting Dispute from the More menu, it will clear from your intray and will move to the Disputed tab. You can leave it here until the dispute is resolved, then either return it to the intray or send the bill to trash.

Trash

Click the bin icon, next to the More menu to trash a bill and delete it. Only users with the appropriate permissions can delete invoices. If your role is read-only for Approvals, you will not be able to delete them.


Should I approve a bill?

To work out whether to approve, dispute or trash a bill, you should look at a combination of things.

Does the bill look legitimate?

Panel 3 is a true representation of the bill as it was received by Lightyear, and has not been altered by Lightyear in any way. It may have more than one page. Directly above the image itself is an indicator as to how many pages it contains. Use the arrows to toggle between pages.

Do you recognise the sender of the bill?

In Panel 2, the Email tab shows you the email that the bill was received from, and the content of the email.


​The Edit Invoice tab shows you the details that Lightyear has extracted from the bill, and whether the rows of information it has extracted equate to the total shown on the footer of the bill.

If you edit a bill, the fact that you have edited it will be recorded on the bill history. The bill history can be found under Activity > Activity.

Before approving the bill you should check the data that Lightyear has extracted to make sure you are happy with it.

📌Note: If your business is using Lightyear price checker, Lightyear will advise you in Panel 2 as to whether the unit price that the supplier has charged you is correct. ​

More data might be viewed by clicking the blue More button under Due Date.


Does the sum total of the rows on the bill equal the footer on the bill?

Just above the green Save button on your bill, you will see a set of three figures:

  • Subtotal

  • Tax

  • Total

These are the figures that will end up in your accounting software.

When the extracted data does not match, you'll see warning notifications next to the totals.

These are flagging to you that the Subtotal, Tax and Total are different to the figures that Lightyear has also extracted from the footer of the bill. Hovering over the exclamation mark will display a message advising on the warning notification.


If you want to ignore the figures that Lightyear has extracted from the footer of the bill, simply click on the warning and click Update.

If you want the total of the rows to equal the figures that Lightyear has extracted from the footer of the bill (i.e., the footer of the bill is correct), you should edit the rows until they match the footer of the bill. It may be possible for you to simply correct the mismatch by editing the values in the rows above, or by adding a row, or by trashing a row, but it may also require a combination of all three.

Once you have edited data in this panel you need to click the Save button.

📌 Note: You are not required to reconcile the Subtotal, Tax or Total values when presented with warning notifications. The values in the fields on your bill will be exported to your accounting software regardless of the warnings.

GST issues

If the Tax box is red, or there are exclamation notifications against the Tax field, Lightyear has detected that the supplier has charged you GST when in fact they are not registered to do so. You should investigate why before approving the bill and exporting to your accounting software.

⚠️ Important: This functionality is only available in Australia.

Duplicate bills

Even though the bill is correct and legitimate, you may not wish to approve it if it is a duplicate.

If Lightyear detects the same bill number from the same supplier, it will mark both with a double-red icon in panel-1.

If you see this, you need to work out which bill to trash, and which to approve: click on the double-red icon, and from here you can view each bill and decide which to trash and which to continue to approve.

More Options

Whilst simply approving a bill will be the normal thing that you do from the intray, we realise that exception handling is as important to make the workflow of all bills as painless as possible. Lightyear groups all of this additional functionality under the MORE button.

  • Create PO creates a Purchase Order from the bill (if Purchase Orders are enabled)

  • Dispute Invoice moves the bill to the disputed tab

  • Email Supplier will email the address from which the bill was sent from​

  • Email To Me will email you a copy of the bill

  • Mark as Unread is self-explanatory

  • Re-Apply Map re-applies the most recently applied map to return the document to it's original unedited state

  • Return to Processing sends the bill back to the Processing Tab to be re-mapped again. Use this if the data extracted is clearly wrong and always will be. Before using this function make sure to Add a Note to the bill to state why it needs to be remapped. Please remember that it does not send it to us to be mapped.

  • Send Bill Task allows you to send the bill to another Lightyear user or external person for their approval

  • Transfer Bill will transfer the bill to another Lightyear account.


Changing settings for the whole bill

To the top of panel 2 you will see some labels for the bill in question - this is Summary bill information.

Supplier

If, for whatever reason, the supplier the bill is assigned to is incorrect, you can change it here.

GL Codes

Before you can approve a bill you need to assign a GL Code to it. If you do not know the GL Code, from the drop down list choose ‘Code Not Known”. This will allow you to approve the bill.

In most instances when you are assigning GL Codes the same GL Code will be applied to the entire bill. But in some instances you may wish to assign different GL Codes across different rows.

Tracking Categories/Tagging/Categories/Jobs/Classes

Depending on the accountancy software your company uses, and how Lightyear is set-up, you may see another drop-down box under GL Code. Each Accountancy Software calls this functionality something different but you should recognise the label.

You should refer to the one of the Lightyear Administrators within your company for more information on how they want you to assign and use these labels.

  • Invoice Number - editable

  • Invoice Date - editable

  • Due Date - editable

  • Purchase Order Number - editable

  • Currency - editable

What you cannot see here are some less commonly used fields. By click on View More Fields , the following will be presented to you

  • Delivery Date - editable (if you use inventory this will be date that we tell your inventory system you received the goods replacing the invoice date)

  • Order Date - editable

  • Shipping Date - editable

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