The accounts payable approval process exists to answer one question before money leaves: did somebody with the authority to commit this spend agree to it? Everything else in the design, the thresholds, the second approver on larger amounts, the delegation when somebody is away, is machinery around that question. Most approval processes are designed by finance for finance, and then fail because approvers are not finance people and will not learn a system. This page is how to design the route around the approver instead, what thresholds are actually for, and how to price the process you are running today so a change can be judged rather than argued.
Design for the approver, or the route will be email
The approver is a busy person who is rarely at a desk when the close needs them. If approving requires a login they do not have and a screen they have not seen, invoices will be approved by email anyway and the recorded process will be fiction. Test any route as an approver on a phone before adopting it.
Thresholds are about risk, not seniority
A second approver above an amount is a control against error and fraud, not a mark of importance. Set the threshold where a mistake would actually matter to the business, and accept that most invoices should pass with one approval, because a control everybody routes around is not a control.
Delegation, because absence is normal
The commonest cause of an invoice missing the cut-off is an approver on leave with no named alternate. Decide the alternate in advance and record who actually approved, which is what an auditor will sample. On the worked example on this site, 400 invoices touched three times at six minutes, with 12% going wrong and taking eighteen minutes more, is 134.4 hours a month: $4,300.80 at a $32 loaded rate, $10.75 an invoice.
Questions people ask about accounts payable approval process
Should finance approve invoices?
Finance checks the invoice; the budget holder approves the spend. Collapsing the two means finance is approving commitments it did not make, which is both a control weakness and unfair to the person doing it.
How long should approval take?
Short enough that the cut-off is never the binding constraint. The practical test is the list of unapproved invoices as the month ends: if it is large every month, the route is too slow whatever the average says.
What if an approver simply will not respond?
Escalate on a stated timer rather than by nagging. An unanswered approval is a decision to accrue, and making that consequence visible tends to be more persuasive than a fourth reminder.