Why invoices stall in approval, and how to keep them moving

Ask any bookkeeper where invoices go to wait and the answer is the same: the approver's inbox. Very few of those invoices are being held back on purpose. The approver didn't know they were waiting, or couldn't tell what was wrong with them, or was on leave.

What a stalled approval costs

• Late payment. In the UK, a business supplier can claim statutory interest on late commercial payments and fixed compensation per invoice (GOV.UK). Few do, but the right is there.
• Supplier goodwill. Suppliers chase, put you on stop, or quietly price in the delay.
• Early-payment discounts. A discount for paying within 10 days is gone by the time an invoice comes out of a two-week queue.
• Month-end. Unapproved invoices have to be accrued by hand, then reversed when they are finally entered.

Why invoices stall

1. Too many emails. A notification per invoice works for a week. After that, twenty notifications a day are filtered or ignored.
2. No sense of age. An invoice waiting a day and one waiting three weeks look the same in a list.
3. Not clear what's wrong. “Please review” makes the approver open the invoice, the PO and the delivery note to find the problem. That task gets put off.
4. One approver, no cover. Holidays and sick days stop the queue entirely.

A reminder routine that works

• Wait a little before the first email. When a batch of invoices is uploaded at once, the approver should get one email about the batch, not one per invoice.
• One digest a day, at most. A single email listing what is waiting, with the supplier, invoice number and amount on each line.
• Overdue at the top. Choose a threshold, say three days, and list anything older first.
• More than one person can approve. Give at least two people the approver role so a holiday doesn't stop payments.
• The reason travels with the invoice. “Billed 20, received 18” can be decided from the email. “Exception” can't.

Keep the control while you speed up

Faster isn't the same as looser. Keep separation of duties: the person who enters an invoice shouldn't be the only person who approves it, and large invoices deserve a second approver (the GAO Green Book treats segregation of duties as a basic control). Every approval, and every approval over an open issue, should record who decided and why.

How Tenet handles it

Tenet checks every hour for invoices waiting for approval. An invoice that entered the queue in the last hour is left alone, so a batch upload becomes one email rather than one per invoice. Admins, approvers and finance leads receive a digest of what is waiting, and each waiting invoice is included at most once every 24 hours. Anything waiting three days or more is marked overdue and listed first. Each person can turn these emails off in their own settings.

You can require a second, different approver for invoices at or above an amount you set. Held invoices come with the figures that differ, and approving or rejecting one needs a reason, which is kept in the audit trail. See approvals and audit trail.