Approval of quotes, invoices, and purchase orders

You can set up an approval workflow for high-value financial documents, such as quotes, invoices, and purchase orders. This helps ensure that documents exceeding a certain value are reviewed and approved by a manager or another designated individual in your company before they're finalized and shared with clients. As a result, you can better manage your costs and avoid unnecessary or unauthorized expenditures.

1. How financial document approval works

To ensure high-value documents on your site go through an approval process, you need to set up the approval workflow for each document type that requires approvals (quotes, invoices, purchase orders) first.

Once the approval workflow is enabled, quotes, purchase orders, and invoices (except scheduled invoices) exceeding the approval threshold must be approved before they can be shared with clients. Here's how the approval process works:

1. Requesting approval:
   When a user creates a financial document that exceeds the threshold, they must request approval before sharing it with clients. The document cannot be modified while it’s pending approval.
2. Reviewing the approval request:
   Once requested, the approver is notified in Scoro and via email (if email notification was triggered) and can approve, modify, or request changes to the document.
3. Requesting document changes (if needed):
   If changes are requested, the document creator is notified in Scoro so they can make the changes and resubmit the document for another approval.
4. Sending approved documents:
   Once approved, the document creator is notified in Scoro and can share it with the client.

The approval process for scheduled invoices works a bit differently. Invoices generated from scheduled invoices exceeding the approval threshold aren't sent to clients automatically – they need to be approved first, after which you need to send them out manually.

2. Plan availability

Approval of financial documents is available on the following Scoro plans:

• Current plans: Enterprise (included by default), Performance (available as a paid add-on)
• Legacy plans: Ultimate

For more information on our pricing plans, see our Plans & Pricing page.

3. Setting up the approval flow

Let's walk through the setup process - we're using quotes as an example here, but you can follow the same steps to set it up for invoices and purchase orders. 

To set up an approval process for a certain document type (quotes, invoices (including scheduled invoices), or purchase orders):

1. Go to the relevant settings page depending on which document type you want to enable the approval flow for, and enable the following checkbox:
   • For quotes, go to Settings > Sales and finance > Quotes and tick the Require approval for quotes checkbox.
   • For purchase orders, go to Settings > Sales and finance > Purchases and tick the Require approval for purchase orders checkbox.
   • For invoices and scheduled invoices, go to Settings > Sales and finance > Invoices and tick the Require approval for invoices checkbox.
2. Select the users or user groups with approval rights.
3. Enter the sum (excluding VAT) that, when exceeded, will require approval for the document.
4. Click Save.

Once the approval flow is enabled:

• Scoro will automatically apply the 'Needs approval' status to all new and existing quotes, invoices, and purchase orders that exceed the set threshold. These documents must be approved before they can be sent to the client or synced to external accounting software, such as QuickBooks and Xero.
• Invoices generated from scheduled invoices exceeding the approval threshold won't be sent to clients automatically. They need to be approved first, after which you must send them out manually.

4. Document approval request process

4.1. Requesting the approval

Approval requests are triggered automatically or manually, depending on the document type:

• After creating a scheduled invoice and selecting the required approvers, the approvers are notified automatically when the next invoice is generated according to the schedule.
• For quotes, invoices (except scheduled ones), and purchase orders, approval must be requested manually. If the document value exceeds the designated approval threshold, the document's detailed view will display the Request approval button.

To request an approval for a quote, invoice (except those created from scheduled invoices), or purchase order:

1. Click the Request approval button.
2. Select the approver(s).
3. By default, approvers are notified in Scoro; however, you can additionally notify them via email by clicking the Notify by e-mail button (with the envelope icon).
4. Click Request to submit your approval request and notify the selected approver(s).

Documents pending approval cannot be modified, and the sending and sharing options are also greyed out. 

To make changes to a document that's already submitted for approval:

1. Cancel the request first by clicking the Cancel approval request button in the document's detailed view.
2. Then, click the Modify button, make the necessary adjustments, and submit another approval request (if the document requires it).

You'll get a notification when an approver has requested changes to your document or approved it.

You can use the Approval status filter in the quote list view to see all quotes with the relevant status. Select the Needs approval status to see all the quotes that require approval.

4.2. Reviewing the approval request

If you’re the designated approver of financial documents on your site, you’ll be automatically notified about documents to review as soon as the requester submits their approval request:

• Notification in Scoro is sent by default for all approval requests. Click the notification to open the document in question and review it.
  
• If the requester triggers an email notification, you will also receive an email with key details about the document and a link to navigate directly to the document on your site.
  

Alternatively, you can review the documents and their approval statuses from the respective list view (quote list, invoice list, purchase order list) – simply use the Approval status filter to display documents with the relevant approval status(es).

To ensure the approval status is always visible in your list view:

1. Click View and select Data columns.
2. Enable the Approval status data column to add it to your list view.

When you're reviewing the document and discover that some changes are needed before approving it, click the Request changes button and provide a relevant comment for the creator so they know what to adjust. The creator will be notified to make the changes and will be required to resubmit the approval request.

You can also click the Modify button to modify the document yourself.

Once the quote is ready for approval, click Approve. If the request was made by the document creator, this will notify them of the approval, and they can send or share the quote with the client.

If you were notified about the approval request but the document was already approved, it simply means that the request was sent to several people and has already been approved by someone else. The Approval status row will show the approval date and the approver's initials.

You can also review, modify, and approve any quote requiring approval, even when the document creator hasn't submitted an approval request. Click Modify if some changes need to be made and Approve when the quote is ready for approval.

4.3. Making the requested changes to the document

Scoro automatically notifies the document creator in case the approver has requested changes to the document before it can be approved. Scroll down to the Comments section in the document's detailed view to see the approver's comment.

After making the required adjustments, click Request approval to notify the approver that the document has been updated and can be reviewed again.

4.4. Sharing the approved document with the client

The document creator is automatically notified once the document is approved, and it can be sent out to the client.

4.5. Modifying an approved document

Most fields for approved documents are locked to prevent further changes to already reviewed and approved documents. To unlock and modify these fields (e.g., when you've already sent out the approved document and the client requested some changes):

1. Reset the approval flow first – open the document, click the Modify button, then click Reset approval. This will change the quote's approval status to 'Needs approval'.
2. Make the necessary changes and save the changes.
3. If the modified quote still exceeds the approval threshold, you'll need to request approval again.

5. Approval statuses

Here's what each approval status means:

• Approval not needed - quotes that don't exceed the threshold and don't require approval
• Needs approval - quotes that exceed the threshold and require the creator to submit an approval 
• Request pending - quotes that have been submitted for review
• Changes requested - quotes for which the approver has requested some changes
• Approved - all the approved quotes