Auto-approval is a new functionality that allows you to specify which kind of documents are to be approved automatically. The resulting time savings enable approvers to focus on what really needs their attention. Auto-approvals are available in the ApprovalMax Advanced and Premium plans for Xero and QuickBooks Online.

How to benefit from an auto-approval step

Organisations deal with a variety of purchase orders and invoices, from regular small buys like stationery or monthly utility payments to one-time high amount orders from a new vendor. When there are lots of expenses of various types, it doesn’t make much sense to approve regular or minor expenses manually – no matter how easy approvals with our mobile app are, approvers would still need time to view all the invoices. Even worse, it’s harder to focus on those that do require attention when you’re already tired from going through plenty of “no brainer” ones, like utilities.

The Auto-approval feature saves approvers a lot of time and helps them focus on what’s really important because all documents that meet the conditions you specify in the auto-approval step will be authorised automatically and not assigned to anyone.

How to set up an auto-approval step

To add an auto-approval step, go to the workflow where you need it and click on the “+” button after the first step before clicking on “Enable”.

Next, click on “Auto-approval settings” to configure the rules for auto-approvals. You can add as many rules as you like. For each rule you can specify the amount, supplier, requester, category or account, region or location as well as other parameters to define when requests are to get auto-approved.

Once all the rules have been added, click on “Done”. That’s it. You might want to let approvers know though which types of requests will no longer need their decision – to avoid confusion.

If you were using our “Safety catch” feature before, you should switch to the “auto-reject” mode to make sure that documents which are neither auto-approved nor assigned to a specific approver are always rejected.