QuickBooks Desktop 2022: Accounts Payable Approvals for Enterprise Solutions

Intuit recently announced the release of QuickBooks 2022 Desktop. The Author has been evaluating various pre-release versions of these products for almost a year and has spent hours communicating with Intuit personnel, including product managers and developers, so we can help you learn about the new products. This article is one in a series of individual product features intended to provide additional content to that found in our QuickBooks Desktop 2022 Product Summary.

About the Accounts Payable Approvals feature for QuickBooks Enterprise

The Accounts Payable Approvals¹ feature allows businesses to define custom approval workflows for their Accounts Payable when they use certain versions of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. With these workflows, users can configure a custom approval process for Vendor Bills, send these transactions to a designated employee for approval, and track the status of each transaction needing approval using a new dashboard for this purpose.

This feature eliminates the need to track Accounts Payable transaction approvals outside of QuickBooks, where business owners or administrators may not have complete control over the purchases made by their businesses. It also provides a precise mechanism whereby the Accounts Payable process can be delegated and administered with proper internal controls meeting appropriate accountability requirements. It eliminates paper forms, spreadsheets, and other records used to track A/P transactions outside of QuickBooks, so the entire approval process is part of the accounting record system and audit trail. 

You can see this new feature in an Intuit-produced video here.

This new functionality is only available to U.S. users of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Solutions (v22.0) Platinum and Diamond Editions, plus QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise-Accountant users.

How the Accounts Payable Approvals feature works

Note: You must be the Company Admin and be signed up with your One Intuit Account to use this service.

• From the QuickBooks Enterprise Company menu, select Set Up Approval Processes.

• When the Set Up Approval Processes window opens, choose Approval processes. Then select, Get started.

• When the Templates tab opens, click Set up under the Bills template (as shown below).

• When the Approval process for bills template window opens, enter the conditions per your requirements.

• Scroll to the lower portion of the Approval process for bills template window (shown below) and continue entering the instructions for Vendor Bill approvals.

• When you're satisfied with the established workflow for Vendor Bills approvals, click Save and activate (as shown in the window above).

• Click 'OK' (at the bottom of the screen shown above) to acknowledge the successful completion of the set-up process.
• QuickBooks Enterprise displays the completed workflow on the Set Up Approval Processes window (as shown below).

Day-to-Day Use of the Accounts Payable Approval Workflow feature

The Accounts Payable Approval Workflow you established is very sophisticated; it continually monitors vendor bills to determine if they fit the criteria requiring approval and monitors the approval status of vendor bills to keep bills that have not been approved from being processed further by QuickBooks.

• Once the Accounts Payable Approval workflow has been set up within QuickBooks Enterprise, QuickBooks will prompt the user entering a Vendor Bill to send the transaction for approval.
• Approving authorities will be notified by email.

• If the user creating the Vendor Bill is also the approving authority for the transaction, the transaction will not require approval.
• In all cases, Vendor Bills created by the Admin user will not require approval.

• Unless the transaction is approved, the transactions will remain in a "Pending approval" state and will not impact the financial statements or appear on any financial reports.  
• To Approve Transactions, select 'Track and Approve transactions' from the Company menu.

• When the Track and Approve transactions window opens, you will find all vendor bills assigned to you requiring approval.

• To approve or reject a Vendor Bill, choose the transaction, and under the Action column select either, Approve or Reject. 
• Approved Vendor Bills are no longer pending and reflected in the financial statements and appear on financial reports according to the financial reporting basis of the Company.

To learn more about this feature:

Please be sure to tune in for our September QB Talks webinar scheduled for 2 pm Eastern on October 6, 2021, when Laura Madeira joins me to bring you a special version of her "What's New in QuickBooks Desktop for 2022". Laura develops the new years' QuickBooks Desktop training content and exam materials for Intuit, so nobody is more knowledgeable about the new features in this year's products. You can Register Here for the Webinar.

In addition, read Laura's Intuit Firm of the Future article on QuickBooks Desktop 2022. 

Editor's Acknowledgements

A general acknowledgment to Intuit for many of the graphic images used in this feature, some were used as provided from Intuit resources, Insightful Accountant adapted others to magnify or emphasize a specific QuickBooks feature. In addition, Laura Madeira provided some images, and the Author prepared additional graphic images used in this feature from pre-release copies of QuickBooks 2022. Title art adapted courtesy of Intuit QuickBooks.

_{Footnotes & Disclosures:}

¹ _{- This feature alternatively be called Custom Bill Approval workflows at the time of release.}