Accounts Payable

Announcing supplier approval

This idea came from you!

We're excited to announce Supplier approval, one of our most requested features. You can now manage your supplier approval process directly within Sage Intacct, ensuring the correctness of supplier records before the information is used in Accounts Payable and Purchasing transactions.

Users with the proper permissions use the Supplier approval page to review new suppliers and updates to existing supplier records. While a supplier record is pending approval, new Accounts Payable and Purchasing transactions for that supplier can be saved as drafts, but they cannot be posted. After the supplier is approved, the transactions can be posted.

Details

Supplier approval supports a single-level approval structure. To designate an approver, assign the Approve suppliers permission to the user.

When a user submits a new or updated supplier, Sage Intacct sets the supplier state to Submitted and adds the supplier to the approval queue. Approvers who configured their preferences receive an email notifying them that a supplier is awaiting their approval. From the Approve suppliers list, they can review changes and approve or decline suppliers.

While a supplier is awaiting approval, or if the supplier is declined, users cannot do the following:

• Post Accounts Payable and Purchasing transactions for that supplier
• Edit existing transactions for the supplier
• Select supplier transactions for payment

Users can save new transactions as drafts, even for submitted or declined suppliers. This allows you to capture new transactions as they comes in, then post the them after the supplier is approved. This also means that incoming draft transactions from AP Automation are saved normally.

If a supplier is declined, the submitter can edit the supplier record and resubmit it for approval.

How it works

To approve or decline a supplier:

1. Go to Accounts Payable > All tab > Approve suppliers.
2. Select View next to the supplier name to open the supplier record.
3. To see changes made by the submitter, select More actions > View the audit trail.
4. Select Approve or Decline.
5. Optionally, enter Comments.
6. Select Approve or Decline again.

Supplier states

A new State column appears in the Suppliers list to let you know where the supplier record is within the approval process. This field is also visible on the Supplier information page and the Approve suppliers page.

State	Description
Submitted	The supplier is new or updated and is awaiting approval. New transactions for this supplier can be saved as drafts only, and posted transactions cannot be edited or selected for payment.
Declined	An approver declined the new or updated supplier. The approver has the option to include a comment that explains why it was declined and what needs to be done to resubmit. As with submitted supplier records, new supplier transactions can be saved as drafts, only. The submitter can update the supplier record and resubmit.
Approved	The new or updated supplier was approved. Supplier transactions can now be posted.

Approval history

Use the History tab on the supplier information page to review the approval history. You can see who approved the supplier and when, or where the supplier is in the approval process.

Setup

1. Before you enable Supplier approvals, verify that you have the Approve supplier: List permission.

   The permission is necessary because after you enable Supplier approvals, Sage Intacct automatically updates the audit trail for all active and inactive suppliers to show them as approved. The user who enables Supplier approvals recorded as the approver. You can remove the permission after all suppliers are updated.

   The process of updating the audit trail might take some time, depending on how many suppliers you have. Users will not be able to add, edit, delete, or import suppliers until the process completes, so you might want to enable this feature during off hours.
2. At the top level, go to Accounts Payable > Setup > Configuration.
3. Under Supplier approval settings, select the checkbox for Enable supplier approval.
4. To allow users to receive notifications, select the checkbox for Email notifications.
5. Select Save.

   Sage Intacct begins the process of updating the audit trail for existing suppliers, then sends you an email notification when the update is complete.

6. Add additional approvers by assigning the Approve suppliers: List permission, as needed.
7. If you configured supplier approval to support email notifications, let users know that they can update their preferences to receive notifications.

   Approvers can receive notifications when a supplier is ready for their review, and submitters can receive notifications when suppliers they submitted are approved or declined.

Requirements

Subscription	Accounts Payable
Regional availability	All regions
Permissions	Approve suppliers: List
User type	Approve suppliers: Business, Employee, Project manager, or Platform user Submit suppliers: Business user
Configuration	Set up Supplier approval in Configure Accounts Payable.
Migration	All existing suppliers are set to the Approved state after you enable supplier approval.
CSV import	Approvals are not supported when suppliers are updated using the following CSV imports: Supplier visibility Supplier 1099 transaction update The supplier state remains unchanged after these imports.
Restrictions	Supplier approval API not currently available.