Invoice Allocation and Approval
For auditing and compliance purposes, you may want to restrict invoice allocation and approval for payment to specific roles within your organization. The system uses the following components to control the processing of invoices through creation to allocation and approval:
Roles and role permissions.
Create roles for each agent in your AP cycle (for example, Manager, Accountant, AP Clerk), and assign the appropriate supplier invoice activity to each role. For more information on roles and security, see
QAD Security and Controls User Guide.
Supplier invoice activities
Use the Approve, Release for Payment, Prepare Allocation, and Allocate activities to retrieve batches of invoices in different stages of approval. Assign these activities to the appropriate roles. In this way, you can ensure that, for example, the role that can approve invoices cannot release them for payment.
Invoice status codes
Once you have retrieved the appropriate invoices, you move the invoice from one state in the AP cycle to the next by changing the invoice status code.
Implement the approval cycle according to your own internal security requirements. Approving an invoice and releasing it for payment can be completed in one step by one role, or in two separate steps assigned to two roles. In some organizations, invoices for small amounts are created, approved and released in one flow, while invoices for larger amounts are subject to cash flow considerations and held back for payment until the next accounting period.