Proposal For Vendor Payment Approval Process

Proposal summary 

The proposal outlines a vendor payment approval process to efficiently manage and oversee the payment and liabilities owed to vendors, suppliers, and service providers. The process involves various steps and roles to ensure transparency, accuracy, and adherence to company policies and financial controls. 

Requirement 

eVersum has expressed their desire to  establish a payment approval process that efficiently manage the approval process . The process aims to provide a streamlined and efficient approach to manage vendor payments while ensuring appropriate financial control and oversight. Each step is done by only authorized employees and each one of them are assigned with different roles according to the process. By considering the role each step can be controlled, only the user with assigned role can be accessible so assigned processes. 

Prerequisites 

We will enable Vendor payments under Approval routing subtab in accounting preference to create approval workflow for vendor payment. 

Provide the list of the permissions required for each role and the associated employees. 

Process Flow  
 

The bill payment approval process involves following specific roles and includes the sequence of process flows. 
 

Process follows:  

• Prepare payment Pending and Initial Approve  – eV – Accountant – EXT 
• Prepare payment Approve and Authorize – eV – CEO 

 
Deliverables 

We will be implementing a custom bill payment approval workflow to ensure proper scrutiny and authorization of bill payments within the organization. The workflow involves two levels of approval to carefully review and verify bill payment requests before they are processed. 
 

Approval Set Up for Bill Payment. 
 

The bill payment record will undergo a two-level approval process depending on the individual bill payment amount, guaranteeing appropriate authorization of the payment within the organization. 

1. Bill Payment Amount up to €300.   
   For bill payments up to €300, the Accountant has the authority to directly approve or reject the payment request. Such payments will not require a second level of approval. Upon approval, the status of these records will be updated to “Approved.” 

2. Bill payment Amount Greater than €300.   
   For bill payments exceeding €300, the Accountant will carefully review and verify the payment details. Subsequently, they will submit these payment records for the CEO’s approval. Before submitting them for the second level of approval, the accountant has the option to approve or reject these records themselves. 

Bill Payment First Level Approval 

When a Vendor Payment is created by the eV – Accountant – EXT, a button called “Approve” will be shown in the payment record.   

If the approver clicks the Approve button for bill payment amount up to €300, then   

• The Approval Status field of the record is updated to Approved for the bill payment records whose amount less than €300.  
• The record will remain locked for all users except Standard Admins. 
   

If the approver clicks the Approve button for bill payment amount greater than €300, then   

• “Submit for Approval” button is shown to submit the record for approval after the eV – Accountant – EXT completes the review. 
• When the eV – Accountant – EXT click the Submit for Approval button,    

• An email with the record link is sent to the corresponding approver to request them to review and approve the record.   
• The record will be locked for all users except Approver and Standard Admins. 

Bill Payment Second Level Approval  

Once the approval is completed by the Accountant, the Vendor Payments will be displayed in the Reminder portlet of the NetSuite Dashboard for the approver and goes to the CEO for the second level of approval.  

Only the payment record whose payment amounts greater than €300 will be shown for the approval of CEO. 

• The Approve and Reject button on record will be available for the approver (CEO) roles to approve and reject the bill payment record.  

• If the approver clicks the Approve button, then   
• The Approval Status field of the record is updated to Approved. Which will be considered as the final approval of the bill payment 
• An email will be sent to the creator of the bill payment record.  
• The record will remain locked for all users except Standard Admins.  

• If the approver clicks the Reject button, then   

• The Rejection reason will be recorded on a custom record 
• The status of the bill payment record updated to Rejected.  
• An email will be sent to the creator of this record with the Rejection reason.  
• The record will remain locked for all users except creators and Standard Admins. 

Custom Record Setup for Rejection 

If the Vendor Payments has been rejected by the corresponding approver, it will navigate to a custom record to enter reject reason. 

Custom Record Setup 

We will be creating a custom record for saving the reject reason and the record having following fields.   

• Bill Payment 
• Rejected User 
• Rejection Reason 

In case the corresponding approver rejects the Vendor Payments, it will be directed to a customized record to input the reason for the rejection. The rejection reason will be attached under the subtab in reject records. The reject record will create every time a vendor payment gets rejected.  

In approval stages, the approver can Reject the vendor payment by clicking on the “Reject” Button.  

• Once the user clicks the “Reject” button, it navigates to the Reject reason record.  
• The approver can enter the Reason for rejection and submit the Reject reason record.  
• After submitting the Reject reason record, the Reject reason record will attach to the bill payment record. 

• The custom approval status will change to “Rejected”.  
• The record goes to the previous level of approval when we reject the record from any level. 
• The “Resubmit For approval” button will appear in the payment record. 
• The user can update the payment record and click the “Resubmit For approval” button to submit the payment for the approval process. 
• Once the user clicks the “Resubmit For approval” button, the custom approval status will change to “Submitted for approval” and the payment goes to next level of approval and the approval process will continue. 

Vendor Payment Approval Tracking  

Users can track the approvals of the vendor payment by checking the field  

“Vendor Payment Approval Status”. This field will show the status of Vendor Payment Approval. 

Status	Details
Submitted For Approval	The accountant has done the initial verification of the bill payment and then approve the bill payment and submitted for CEO approval
Accountant Approved	The accountant has verified and approved the bill payment and submitted for CEO approval.
CEO Approved	The CEO has verified and approved the Vendor Payment. Then the Vendor Payment approval process is completed, and it has fully verified.
CEO Rejected	The CEO has checked and rejected the vendor payment. Then the payment can be resubmitted for the approval again from CEO.
Pending Re-submission	The Vendor Payment has been rejected by the approvers (CEO). Currently the payment needed to be corrected by corresponding user and can resubmit for approval

Reminder Portlet  
 

Reminder searches will be created for Accountant and CEO roles to find the Vendor Payments waiting for their approval. The user can add the reminders in the dashboard by clicking set up on the reminder portlet. 

Assumptions 

• When the approver rejects the record, it always goes to the First level of approval. And the user has to start the approval process from the first level. 
• We are not providing any validation to the payment record creation 
• The reminder portlet option is user-specific, only the specified user will get notified in the approval process.  
• The custom approval status field will be disabled, and the user cannot be able to modify the status.  
• All buttons will be visible to Administrator Role employees.  

• Workflow and Script will be working only for the newly created records and not for existing records.  
• The approver can reject and enter the reject reason in every approval level.  
• As the creator and initial approver is eV – Accountant – EXT there will be no option for “Rejection” for eV – Accountant – EXT 
• We will assume the currency used is transaction currency. 
• The bill payment records with payment amount less than €300 will not be shown to the eV – CEO. 
•  

Risk 
 

•  We will enable the vendor payment approval routing in accounting preference. We hope currently you are not using electronic fund transfer. If we enable the Vendor payment approval feature, we cannot use the electronic fund transfer feature at the same time. 
•  We will only add the permissions to these roles only for completing these approval cycle. 
• We will not consider the bulk approval process in this case.