Accounts Payable Approvals: Effortless integration, invaluable insights, simple processing accuracy, all within Microsoft Teams using Power Apps

What is Accounts Payable Approvals:

Accounts Payable Approvals enables invoice documents to be analysed, actioned, and tracked - reducing manual effort and errors - and maximising employee time and productivity built with Microsoft Power Apps.

Power Apps are scalable, which means they can grow with your business. As your organization needs to evolve, you can now easily adapt and expand your Power Apps application without significant development effort or cost and your licensing and information is stays part of your Microsoft 365 Tenancy.

Power Apps support mobile-friendly application interfaces, enabling users access to manage their invoices on the go, whether they are using smartphones or tablets, your processes are enhanced, convenient and flexible.

The Impact:

Learning and adopting a new application is time consuming and frustrating, but what if you could streamline your invoice processing while using an app that is already familiar? APA is integrated within Teams, with the same Teams interface, to have the same look and feel, enabling you to quickly and intuitively navigate the solution.

Key Features:

Integrated with Microsoft Teams: Our easy-to-use solution is seamlessly integrated with your existing Microsoft Teams platform. It also has the same ‘feel,’ formatting, and colours, making it a tool that is familiar and intuitive.

Dynamically build the Approval groups: When invoices are sent for approval, specific groups can be created and selected to receive the invoice. All members of that group will be granted permission to that document. Once the approval decision is made, the permission will be removed.

Power BI reporting: Significantly enhance the AP department’s optimisation of resources and forecasting capabilities. With real-time insights and dynamic graphs, you can quickly access essential metrics, gain deeper insights into purchasing patterns, and streamline future planning. Power BI reporting improves visibility into liabilities and potential bottlenecks.

Key Benefits:

Invoice Receipt and Storage: Invoices are automatically received via email, extracted, and securely stored in SharePoint, with full version control and audit capabilities.

Notification and Review: Finance team members are instantly notified in Microsoft Teams when new invoices enter the system, where they can view, analyse, and audit invoices in a unified view.

Automated Approval Workflow: Invoices are sent for approval, triggering an automated, four-stage workflow (sent, pending, approved, archived) within Teams, enhancing efficiency.

Approval and Tracking: Approvals are actioned and tracked within Teams, with each invoice’s full history accessible at a glance, ensuring transparency.

Visibility and Reconciliation: The finance team has complete visibility of all invoices in various stages of approval. Rejected invoices can be returned with comments, streamlining communication.

Reporting and Insights: Power BI provides dynamic, self-interrogatable reports, enabling management to track metrics and make informed decisions about resource allocation and process optimisation.

How it works:

Step 1. Invoices are received by email, automatically extracted and securely stored in SharePoint which is audited, permission-managed, and supports full document version control.

Step 2. The application is embedded directly into Microsoft Teams and allows your finance team to check invoices and manually assign key vendor information.

Step 3. Invoices are sent for approval triggering a workflow process of four stages: sent, pending, approved, and archived. Automated approval is initiated with no need to send documents or manually write emails.

Step 4. Get instantly notified of approval decisions which can be actioned within Microsoft Teams. Approval activities are recorded and displayed in–line with the corresponding invoice, providing easy access to the full history of each invoice at-a-glance.

Step 5. The finance team have complete visibility of invoice documents in all approval states. Rejected invoices can be returned to vendor with comments directly from the application.

Step 6. Once items are approved and have been processed in the companies finance system, the finance team can reconcile the invoice by filling out key fields in the application. Before archiving the invoice.

Step 7. Reports are provided using the Power BI platform which powers leaders to access dynamic self-interrogatable reporting. Track invoice volume metrics including: volume and value over time, volume and value breakdown by service account and approval duration. This allows management to make informed decisions in regards to future resource planning and identifying process bottlenecks.

We offer a turnaround time of 7 days for our standard package of APA. Contact us for more detailed pricing on AI and finance integration upgrades. Separate to this investment is our maintenance option, a 1-1 support package priced at £1247 per year.