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Vic.ai Autonomous Approval Flows
Autonomous Approval Flows Set-up and Walkthrough
Autonomous Approval Flows Set-up and Walkthrough

Best Practices and a Guide as you craft your Autonomous Approval Flows

Ryan Goetz avatar
Written by Ryan Goetz
Updated over a week ago

Welcome to Vic.ai Autonomous Approval Flows, the intelligent, efficient, and autonomous way to remove human error and improve efficiency by no longer having humans translate approval spreadsheet to approval flows.
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You will craft approval flows that trigger based upon vendor, amount, GL account, as well as dimension and delineate exactly which approver(s) need to be involved for every feasible scenario.

Once set, as an invoice is processed and fields are updated, the Vic.ai Approval flow will update dynamically as different flows are triggered!

If you do not yet use Vic.ai Approvals, please contact your Vic.ai representative to learn more.

Please Note: There is a maximum of 100 different Approval Flows per company that can be created. Only Admin Users are able to configure Approval Flows.


AutoPost & AutoExport

One of the key automation features to streamline your workflow is AutoPost & AutoExport. The invoice does not need to be Autopiloted, just fully approved. Any invoices that have an error in posting/exporting to the connected system, such as being in a closed period or missing a required field will need to be corrected and the process started again manually. Your team can create a View to see errors to remediate.
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To enable AutoPost or AutoExport, please have an Organization Admin contact your Customer Success Manager or Vic.ai Support via in-app chat.


Accessing Autonomous Approvals

To gain access to craft Autonomous Approval Flows (AAF), contact your Vic.ai representative or in-app support. Also tell Support if users should be able to modify the pre-defined AAF flow, or if they are only determined by the flows you set!
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Once access is granted:

  1. Select the desired company

  2. Click the Admin tab in the Navigation bar

  3. Select Approval Flows


How Approvals Work

Autonomous Approvals are a two-step process.

  1. Autonomous Approval will choose the first rule that would trigger for an invoice.

  2. Autonomous Approval will then implement the approval step(s) and user(s) per approval step as defined in the workflow.

Once you've created your Autonomous Approval flows, when invoices enter Vic.ai, we will apply the first flow (top to bottom) that matches the invoice attributes. As an invoice is updated, for example changing the GL account, the Approvers will update for you!

Best Practices for Autonomous Approvals

  1. Create your workflows from the top-down, as Vic.ai will look at the rules in that order to determine which to apply. Once a rule matches, that Approval Flow occurs.

  2. Have a fall-back approval sequence at the bottom of your flows to occur if nothing else is triggered.

  3. Make sure all your triggers are set! If a trigger has a blank field, that trigger won't be met and the system will SKIP that flow and continue searching.
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Crafting Approvals

Use our intuitive editor to create as many workflows as you need!

Trigger and Conditional Statement Options

You can use all of the following to target your approval or user step triggers.

  • Total Amount

  • GL Account

  • Vendor

  • Vendor Tags*

  • PO Ranges*

  • Dimensions. such as:

    • Class

    • Customer

    • Department

    • Job

    • Location

    • Property

    • etc.

Options may vary based upon the trigger, but the full range of conditional statements is:

  • Greater than (This GL trigger functions as an AND)

  • Less than (This GL trigger functions as an AND)

  • Less than or equal to (This GL trigger functions as an AND)

  • Greater than or equal to (This GL trigger functions as an AND)

  • Equal to (This GL trigger functions as an AND)

  • Ranges* (This GL trigger functions as an OR)

  • Multi-select* (This GL trigger functions as an OR)

To enable the Ranges and Multi-select options for GL accounts, PO Ranges, Vendor Tags please have an Organization Admin contact Vic.ai in-app support.


Approval Flow:

Define when a flow should be initiated

  • Title/Name: Short name for the approval flow

  • Description: Fuller description of the approval flow

  • Triggers (AND vs. OR):

    • Different triggers function as AND connectors. E.g. Vendor is "Amazon" and Location is "Austin". The system will look for Amazon AND Austin

    • Multiple of the same trigger function as OR connectors. E.g. Department is "Engineering", "HR", OR "Sales"

Except for GL Account Triggers. They can be an AND or OR.

Approval Steps:

Define who should approve in a flow

  • Approver: Add multiple approvers from the search feature

  • Any: Determine if a single approver needs to approve a step to advance

  • All: Determine if all approvers need to approve a step to advance

  • System*: Can determine if the system should Auto-approve the invoice (common examples being low amounts <$50 or vendors that need to be paid ASAP)

  • Triggers (AND vs. OR):

    • Different triggers function as AND connectors. E.g. Vendor is "Amazon" and Location is "Austin". The system will look for Amazon AND Austin

    • Multiple of the same trigger function as OR connectors. E.g. Department is "Engineering", "HR", OR "Sales"

      • Except for GL Account Triggers. Multiple GL Account triggers function as an AND. All triggers must be present for a flow or approval step to trigger.

To enable the System options, please have an Organization Admin contact Vic.ai in-app support.


Please Note: when removing an Approver user from Vic.ai that is included in your Approval Flow steps, you will first need to remove or replace their user at each step or flow they are included on. Removing the user prior to removing them from all approval flows will cause issues on the proper implementation of your approval flows. Please contact Support if you have any questions!

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