New Invoice Verification & Improved Approval Workflow
In this release, we have improved the invoice approval workflow and added a new workflow for invoice verification.
The new approver workflow supports multiple approvers to be appointed as invoice approvers for an invoice, which all need to approve the invoice before it will be fully 'Approved'.
Accounting user with the "Approve others invoices"-right can move a partially approved invoice to "Approved"-state.
During bill-run the invoice approvers are chosen from the Case and Client manager roles, based on what has been setup in the Control Panel, and if there have been any overrides set on Case- or Client-level with the 'Invoice Approver Responsible'-role. Where Case level is the highest, followed by Client level and then Control Panel settings.
Case Card Level
Any Case Manager(s) with the role 'Invoice Approver Responsible' will be added to the invoices 'Approvers' list.
Client Card Level
If no-one is set as 'Invoice Approver Responsible' on the Case Card level, then any Client Manager(s) with the role 'Invoice Approver Responsible' will be added to the invoices 'Approvers' list.
Control Panel
If no one is set as 'Invoice Approver Responsible' on either the Client Card and Case Card, then the approvers will be dependent on which selection is made under Control Panel > Organisation > Lawfirm Settings that will dictate the approver's list for each invoice. 
Depending on the settings above, this would dictate who becomes the "Approver(s)" for those invoices where case manager(s) or client manager(s) have not been set with the role "Invoice Approver Responsible".
Approval Workflow
To see the current list of approvers for a particular invoice, open the invoice, and you will see the list of approvers on the top right of the Invoice.
Every invoice approver must Approve the invoice to move the invoice move from Draft to Approved state, or an Accounting User with "Approver others Invoices"-right can mark an invoice as Approved without every approver's approval.
It is also possible to remove or change Approvers if they are not able to approve the invoice, in the case of removing an approver, if all other approvers have approved an invoice it will be then moved to 'Approved'-state.
If there is more than one approver, and one approver has clicked "Approved" - then in their invoice list it will look like as below.
The invoice is now "approved" but is still in the Draft section; pending other approver's approval. Once all other approvers "approve" the invoice, it will move to the "Approved" section.
If you are an Invoice Approver, Assistant or Accountant, you can add additional approvers or remove approvers by clicking on the small "pencil" icon on the top right.
Click on the pencil icon and the following drop-down dialogue will appear where you can remove/add approvers as needed.
You must have at least one User in this list to be able to click on the "Apply" button.
If you attempt to remove all approvers and then clicking "Apply", you will receive a warning message.
Any newly added approver will receive a system notification notifying them that they have an invoice to approve.
Verification Workflow
The verification workflow allows the participants of an invoice to verify their own part of the invoice.
To send verification requests to the participants of the invoice, go inside an invoice Draft state. You will see a button "Send for Verification" on the left side of the list of Approvers within the invoice, as below.
Clicking on this will bring down a drop-down menu as below.
The list here will populate with Users who are not Approvers and have time/expense records being billed.
You can remove Users out of verification by clicking on the 'x' icon on the left of their name.
After you have decided who to add/remove from verification, click on the "Apply" button and it will send out notifications to all Users specified.
Verifiers will receive a notification where they will be taken directly to the invoice. The invoice view will be limited to the Users own time and/or expense records.
Users can then review their time and expense records and edit them accordingly.
At the bottom of the invoice view, they will see as below.
- Net Sum
This will display the net sum of all their time records and expenses. - Discard Changes
Clicking this will discard all changes made by the User. - Comment
Here you can add a comment if you wish, which will be visible to the approver(s) and accounting users. - Verify
Button to complete the verifying of the invoice
If the User is satisfied with their time and expenses, clicking on "Verify" mark the invoices as verified. The system will load and take you directly to the Main Card, Invoices-view, and highlighting the invoice that was just verified.
The invoice in the Invoice-view will also say "Verified" if a comment was placed, it will show a snippet of the comment as below.
Verifiers are still able to go back into the invoice and change their time and expense records, as long as the invoice is still within Draft-state.
As a user who has access to invoices, and the invoice has been sent out for verification, at the top of the invoice, will now display two or three circles.
- Blue Circle - Pending
This will display how many verifiers are left to verify their time/expense records. Hovering over this icon will show a list of verifiers, the date of when verification was sent, and by who.
- Green Circle - Verified
This will display how many verifiers have verified their time and expense records without comments. Hovering over this icon will show a list of verifiers and the date of verification.
- Yellow Circle - Verified with Comments
This will display how many verifiers have verified their time and expense records with comments. Hovering over this icon will show a list of verifiers, the date of verification, and their comments.
The yellow dot will only appear if at least one verifier has verified their time/expense records with comments.
Invoice List, Group By
It is now possible to group invoices based on, for example, Invoice Approver, Client Manager, or Case Manager. When grouping invoices same invoice can appear in multiple groups, i.e. if the Client has multiple Client Managers, it will show in both Case Managers groups.
Available types to group by,
- Client
- Payer
- Invoice Approver
- Client Manager
- Case Manager
- Case Participant
Mark invoice as "Sent"
Invoices that are not sent out using e-mails, can now be marked as "Sent" after the invoice has been sent with other means, such as postal/mail envelope or e-invoice.
After the invoice has been sent out to the payer click on the "Sent"-button in the Finalized invoice list.
If there is any invoice payment added through an accounting system before the "Sent" flag has been set, the invoice will be automatically marked as Sent.
Download Multiple Invoice PDFs
You can now download multiple invoice PDFs either as a .zip file or concatenated PDF file.
To do this, go to the Invoices-view, in any state (Draft, Approved, or Finalized) select the invoices you would like to download.
Once the invoices have been selected, click on 'Download' and a drop-down list will appear.
There are three options to choose from.
- Download as Zip
Clicking this will download the selected invoices as separate PDFs in a .zip file. - Download as PDF
Clicking this will download the selected invoices as a concatenated PDF file. - Cancel
Clicking this will cancel and make the drop-down menu disappear.