Invoice Approval

In large organizations, managing vendors, suppliers, and payments is a huge challenge. The key issue here is organizing and administering payments. When handling payments for multiple vendors, it’s easy for things to go wrong.

Our template is designed to streamline invoice approval workflows, reduce admin costs, and create better vendor relationships.

What is invoice approval software?

Invoice approval software allows your supplier and vendors to submit invoices. These can then be viewed, managed, and paid by your team, within one tool. In other words, this is a closed platform for submitting, managing, and processing supplier payments.

This replaces manual invoice submission and management. For example, without a dedicated tool, suppliers generally have to send invoices to their account managers. This leads to poor oversight, miscommunications, and disorganization.

In extreme cases, invoices might go unpaid, leading to poor vendor relationships.

Why do businesses use digital approval tools?

Dedicated approval workflow tools are a much smarter way to manage invoices. Digitizing your approval workflows is a simple and effective way to reduce admin costs and streamline internal processes.

Invoice approval software also leads to improved supplier experiences.

Rather than manually sending invoices to your account owners, vendors can simply upload new invoices directly to a centralized platform. They can then view, edit, and query the status of each invoice, without the need for excessive calls and emails.

What should invoice approval software include?

A basic invoice approval tool has three components:

1. A form interface for vendors to submit invoices.
2. Functionality for users to manage and respond to new invoices.
3. A back-end database for storing and managing invoice information.

The best tools allow you to automate your invoice approval workflows. When an invoice is approved or rejected in the approval software, it triggers automations for payment processing or client communications.

Our invoice approval software template

Our invoice approval software template is built for efficiency and fast deployment.

Our template offers:

• Support for external databases.
• Complete customization.
• Automated processes.
• Intuitive UI.
• Tiered permissions.
• Third-party integrations.
• Responsive design.
• Optional self-hosting.
• Design customization.
• Streamlined workflows.

With our template, you can build deployable custom approval software in minutes. Our intuitive, low-code builder allows you to automate invoice approval workflows quickly and easily.

Instant invoice submission

Our template is built around a fast and intuitive interface for submitting invoices. In seconds, vendors can upload invoices to your workflow software, without the hassle of manually contacting your team.

Vendors can upload a wide range of attachments. Key data fields, including the vendor’s name and date of submission, auto-complete, for maximum efficiency and convenience.

When a user completes the submission form, a new row is created in the invoices database. Vendors can then view or edit key details of their own invoices, while internal users can access invoices from all suppliers.

Custom invoive approval workflows

Of course, every business has different approval workflows. Customize your invoice approval software to fully match your internal processes. We’ve provided a status data field for entries in our invoices database.

When a new invoice is submitted, it’s assigned the pending status. Internal users can then change this to approved, declined, or queried, and provide comments for vendors.

With Budibase, you can easily set up rules for automatic approval. For example, you might want to create auto-approve conditions, based on trusted suppliers, or for invoices under a value threshold.

Simplify communications

Our invoice workflow template is built to streamline supplier management. Invoice approval software eliminates the need for most common vendor queries. Vendors can submit invoices and receive payments, without ever having to contact your team.

We’ve also added functionality for when your team needs to query an invoice submission or request additional information. Simply set the invoice’s status to queried and provide comments for the vendor.

Add your SMTP credentials, and use built-in email automation to notify vendors of your query, simplifying the communications process.

Process automation

Budibase makes automating your invoice approval process easy. Use any action in your approval workflow app to trigger our proprietary library of automations. We’ve also provided a built-in JavaScript editor, to create advanced custom functions.

Budibase makes it easy to automate processes across your entire software stack. Trigger automations in third-party apps using Zapier, Webhooks, and more.

Use our template to create highly automated approval workflows, by connecting to CRMs, payment processing tools, communications software, and more.

You might also like our client portal for accountants .

Access control

When it comes to invoice processing, data protection is crucial. Our template makes it easy to control how different users access your invoice approval software. Basic users can submit invoices, and view their own previous submissions.

Power users can view and respond to any submitted invoice.

With Budibase, you have the power to fully customize your permission tiers. All Budibase apps come with four levels of access. You also have the complete flexibility to add and remove tiers as you see fit.

Searchability, filtering, and organization

Our invoice approval tool makes it easy to search and filter different submissions. We’ve provided separate invoice list pages for vendors and internal teams. The vendor list screen only displays entries that were created by the specific user.

Each of these features our dynamic filter component. Users can filter invoice tables by a variety of different data fields. Search for specific invoices based on their value, vendor, submission date, or invoice number.

Reduce admin costs and provide optimized vendor experiences with our filtering tools.

Access from mobile devices

Like all Budibase tools, our invoice approval template is fully mobile responsive and accessibility tested. Design elements automatically scale and resize to fit perfectly on the users’ screens.

Business apps are only as good as the way users interact with them. Mobile responsiveness is crucial for adoption by internal and external users.

Give your vendors an invoicing tool that they can use anywhere, from any device.

Why build approval workflow software with Budibase?

At Budibase, we’re building the world’s largest suite of business tools.

Our platform offers:

• Open-source design.
• Scalability.
• Fast deployment.
• Tiered permissions.
• Flexible hosting.
• Mobile-responsiveness.
• Security.
• Automation.
• Integrations.
• Low-code app development.
• Support for external data sources.
• Infinite customization.
• Built-in JavaScript editor.

Open-source, low code approval apps

Budibase is the smart way to build custom approval workflow software. Our open-source, low-code platform allows you to create deployable approval software, in minutes.

Unlike other platforms, we don’t charge excessive fees to add new users or access premium features. Check out our pricing page for details. Even better, when you build software with Budibase, you’ll actually own the finished product.

Flexible hosting

Choose from self-hosting or cloud-based deployments. Budibase offers unrivaled flexibility for hosting and deploying business tools. Use our invoice approval template as an internal tool, or a web portal.

For maximum security, deploy tools to your own infrastructure, using Kubernetes, Digital Ocean, Docker, Docker Compose, and more. With Budibase, you have complete control over how and where you deploy your approval workflow software.

Conditional UIs

The Budibase platform offers powerful conditionality for all design elements. Hide or display any component in your app, based on form data, user information, behavior, or other conditions.

Use conditionality to provide simplified UIs for complex admin tasks. Hide different elements on mobile devices for improved user experiences across all devices.

Connect to existing datasets

Budibase connects seamlessly with a range of different data sources. Use our template to query, manipulate, and edit existing databases, for seamless deployment. Our template can be used as a modern interface for existing tools, or as a full-stack replacement app.

Budibase offers support for external databases, using MySQL, MSSQL, Postgresql, Airtable, MongoDB, CouchDB, S3, and more.

Third-party app integrations

Our template sits perfectly alongside your existing software stack. Budibase supports third-party app integration , using Zapier and Webhooks. Connect to existing tools for automated workflows which perfectly suit your needs.

Connect our invoice approval software to CRMs, payment processing apps, communications tools, and more for maximum functionality.

Take a look at our recurring credit card authorization form template .

Secure invoice approval software

Budibase offers unrivaled security. With custom access control and optional self-hosting, you have complete control over your own security standards.

We also offer free SSO across all of your Budibase apps and support for common authentication standards including OAuth and OpenID.

Scalability

As your business grows and evolves, it’s crucial that your software tools evolve with it. Budibase tools are designed for maximum scalability.

With our low-code platform , you can quickly and easily deploy new functionality, with minimal interruption or downtime.

Start using our invoice approval software template today

Budibase is the fast, cost-effective way to build custom approval workflow software. In minutes, you can create fully deployable business apps that streamline processes and cut admin costs.

We also offer premium support packages and SLAs for enterprise users. Check out our pricing page for more information.

To start using our template, simply click below.