Approval Policies

Firm Approval Policies gives advisory firms one place to see and manage the AP bill approval policy across every client business — without switching into each one. For each business you see whether the policy is set up (Enabled), its auto-approve and ops dollar thresholds, and how many approvers are assigned. From here you set up the policy or update thresholds. The policy belongs to the firm: one set of thresholds and approvers is shared by all of the firm's clients, so a change here applies to every client. Enabled here means the policy exists; whether a client's bills actually go through approval is that business's own Bill approval workflow switch. The page is at Settings > Team > Firm Approval Policies and pairs with the AP Approval Workflow article, which explains how individual bills are distributed through tiers.

Key capabilities

• Cross-client view of AP approval across all managed businesses, with a Refresh button
• Summary cards: Total Businesses, Approval Enabled, Not Configured
• Per-business status badge: Enabled, Not configured, or Error
• Per-business display of Auto-approve and Ops thresholds (in dollars); they match across clients because the policy is firm-wide
• Total approvers assigned count per enabled business
• Enable the policy in one modal (Configure Approval)
• Update thresholds for a business whose policy is already set up
• Threshold validation: Ops must exceed Auto-approve; Auto-approve must be non-negative
• Inline link to the AP Approval Workflow knowledge-base article
• Businesses without the workflow still appear so you can turn them on

How it works

The page loads each business's workflow state, then lets you provision or adjust thresholds in place.

flowchart TD
  open["Open Approval Policies"] --> load["Load each business workflow"]
  load --> status{"Enabled?"}
  status -->|"Yes"| show["Show thresholds + approver count"]
  status -->|"No"| notcfg["Show Not configured"]
  show --> update["Update thresholds"]
  notcfg --> enable["Enable (provision)"]
  update --> save["Set auto / ops max"]
  enable --> save

How to use it

1. Open Settings > Team > Firm Approval Policies.
2. Review the summary cards for how many businesses have approval enabled vs. not configured.
3. For a business showing Not configured, click Enable to open the Configure Approval modal.
4. Set Auto-Approve Max ($) and Ops Approval Max ($) — Ops must be greater than Auto-Approve — then click Provision Workflow.
5. For a business showing Enabled, click Update to adjust the same thresholds later.
6. Read the linked AP Approval Workflow article to understand how bills are distributed through tiers and contract matching. Each client's own Bill approval workflow switch and approvers are on its Approval Policies page in Accounts Payable (requires the AP Automation add-on).

Pro tips

• Defaults start at $500 auto-approve and $5,000 ops — a sensible conservative baseline you can tune per client.
• Because thresholds are shared, pick values that suit the whole book; a change from any client row updates them for every client.
• Re-running setup with default values resets thresholds to defaults without affecting bills already in approval.
• Assign approvers per tier from a business's own Approval Policies page in Accounts Payable; this firm view shows the count, not the assignment editor.
• A business showing Error failed to load its workflow; refresh, and if it persists, open that business's AP Approval page directly.

In-depth guide

Tiers & thresholds

Bills that have no vendor-specific approval route are directed to one of three outcomes by amount and contract match, checked in this order:

Thresholds are entered in dollars in the modal. The Ops threshold must be strictly greater than the auto-approve threshold; the auto-approve threshold may be zero or more.

Default thresholds

These prefill the provisioning modal when a business hasn't been configured yet.

Provisioning & idempotency

• Enable: sets up the firm's workflow if it does not exist yet, using the thresholds you enter.
• Update: saves new thresholds on the same shared workflow.
• Safe to re-run: running setup again with defaults resets thresholds without breaking in-flight bills.
• In-flight bills: continue through the tier they were routed into; threshold changes apply only to bills created afterward.

Approver counts

• What the card shows: for enabled businesses, the total number of approvers assigned across tiers (Operations, Advisor, Owner).
• Where to assign them: choosing who approves at each tier happens on a business's own Approval Policies page in Accounts Payable; this page surfaces the aggregate count so you can spot a policy with zero approvers.
• Vendor routes: a vendor can also have its own approval route set on that page. Bills from that vendor go to the route's approvers first, ahead of the amount tiers.

Relationship to the AP Approval Workflow

This page is the firm-level configuration surface; the AP Approval Workflow article documents runtime behavior — routing, the Pending Approvals queue, risk scoring, contract match statuses, notifications, and the audit trail. Read it for how bills actually move through the tiers you set here.

Audit implications

• Governance events: provisioning and threshold changes are recorded as governance events.
• Per-bill trail: approvals and rejections are written to the audit log with the acting user, bill, and tier.
• Where to look: use Settings > Audit Log for a full history during close and SOC reviews.

Edge cases

• Businesses with no workflow still appear with a Not configured badge and an Enable action.
• Entering non-numeric amounts, or an Ops threshold not greater than Auto-approve, blocks submission with a validation message.
• If no firm is selected, the page shows a "No firm selected." placeholder.