How-to
Bill approval workflow basics
How approval policies route bills through sign-off. Single-stage and multi-stage support, role-based approvers, segregation of duties, the default £1,000 policy.
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Bill approval workflow basics
When a bill is confirmed, Blankitt checks if it matches an active approval policy. If it does, the bill enters Pending approval — no journal posts until an approver signs off. If no policy matches, the bill posts to the GL straight away (the original behaviour).
The default policy
Out of the box, every business tenant has one policy:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Bills above £1,000 |
| Applies to | Bills (purchase invoices) |
| Min amount | £1,000.00 |
| Max amount | unlimited |
| Stage 1 rule | One approver enough |
| Stage 1 approvers | Any owner or accountant |
| Stage 1 SoD | Raiser excluded |
This implements the §T.10 self-approval block fraud control: bills over £1,000 cannot be confirmed by the person who raised them. Another owner or accountant must approve.
The lifecycle
- Raise a bill — fill in supplier, lines, totals; save as Draft.
- Confirm — the worker matches the bill against active policies.
- No match → posts straight to the GL, status = Sent.
- Match → status =
Pending approval, request raised on the Approvals inbox.
- Approver opens the Approvals inbox — sees the request under "Pending - for me".
- Approve or Reject with optional comment.
- Approve → if last stage, request status = Approved, bill journal posts (DR Expense + DR VAT Input + CR AP), bill status = Sent.
- Reject → request status = Rejected, bill stays in Draft so the raiser can fix and resubmit.
Multi-stage support
The engine supports multi-stage policies (sequence of stages, each with its own rule + approver list). The UI editor in Settings → Approval Policies is single-stage for now (covers 95% of real-world use cases); multi-stage policies can be configured via the API.
See also: Setting up an approval matrix.