Troubleshoot vendor approval

Cannot see Approve vendors menu option

You need the Approve vendors: List permission assigned to you before you can view the Approve vendors page.

If you've been assigned the permission and still do not see the Approve vendors option in the Accounts Payable > All menu, reload your browser page to refresh you options. If this does not resolve the issue, log out and log back in again.

A vendor disappeared from the Approve vendors page

All users with Approve vendors permissions see the same list of vendors on the Approve vendors page. When an approver approves or declines a vendor, that vendor is removed from the approval queue for all approvers.

What actions can I take based on vendor state?

Depending on where a vendor record is within the workflow, it can have a state of Submitted, Approved, or Declined. Some actions related to a vendor can only be done with when the vendor is approved.

See the table that follows for common actions and the vendor state required.

Vendor approval: Actions you can take using vendor information, based on state
Action	Allowed in vendor state
Save transactions as drafts	Submitted, Approved, Declined
Post transactions	Approved only
Edit posted transactions	Approved only
Select transactions for payment	Approved only
Receive incoming transactions from AP automation	Submitted, Approved, Declined
Reference the vendor in a transaction outside of Accounts Payable or Purchasing	Submitted, Approved, Declined
Edit the vendor information record	Submitted, Approved, Declined, as long as all payment requests for the vendor are complete. Editing submits changes for approval.

Can I use vendor approval with AP Automation?

AP Automation creates transactions in draft mode, which means that vendor approval does not conflict with the process of automated bill creation.

However, before you can post the automated transaction, the vendor must be approved.

Vendors updated with a CSV import were not submitted for approval

Vendor 1099 transaction update by CSV import does not support vendor approval. The status for vendors updated with these import templates remains unchanged after import.

Did not receive notifications for requests for approval or vendor approval notifications, after setting up user preferences

If you are not receiving notifications of pending vendors or vendor approvals after setting your user preferences, your admin user might not have configured vendor approval to include email notifications. Contact your admin user to request that Email notifications be selected in the Vendor approval section on Configure Accounts Payable.

I forgot to designate an approver. How can they see vendors already submitted?

When you give a user Approve vendors permission, you give them access to all vendors in the Approve vendors queue. This includes vendors that were submitted for approval before you added the approver, provided the vendor has not been approved or declined.

How can I tell whether a vendor was approved automatically when the feature was configured or reviewed and approved after enablement?

You can identify how the vendor was approved by examining either the History tab or the audit trail in the Vendor record.

History tab

Approval method	Approval type	Action	Comments
Automatic approval	Config enabled	Approved	System approved
User-initiated approval, through Vendor approval page	Create or Update	Approved	Any comments provided by the approver

Audit trail

Approval method	Action	Source	After
Automatic approval	Workflow	System	Approved
User-initiated approval, through Vendor approval page	Workflow	User interface	Approved

You can tell how the was done by looking at the Source column for the approval entry in the audit trail:

System: The approval was triggered automatically when user configured the feature.
User Interface: The user approved the vendor from the Vendor approval page.

Audit trail shows two submit actions with no approve or decline action in between

Two or more sequential submit actions in the audit trail indicate the submitter edited the vendor record and resubmitted it.

This functionality allows a user to add information that they might have forgotten or make corrections, before waiting for an approver to review and decline an incomplete record.

I updated vendors and they are in a Submitted state, but I don't see them in my approval queue

If you are both the submitter and the approver, the vendors you submit appear in the approval queue for other approvers, only. You can't approve your own changes.

In general, best practice is for approvers not to have add or edit permissions for vendors. However, if you have approvers who must be allowed to create and update vendors, make sure you have more than one approver.