Video guide 7 of 7
Approve an invoice and send it to AP
When a vendor sends an invoice, quote or PO, ask a manager to approve it from the ticket, then email it to your accounts payable team in a side conversation with the approval attached. The customer thread stays untouched, and only the files you choose are sent.
- Who this is for
- Agents, approvers and admins
- Time
- About 7 minutes
Before you start
- Approvals and side conversations are switched on per workspace. If you don't see Approvals in the ticket sidebar, ask ZippTicket support to turn them on.
- Anyone with the Agent role or higher can request, give and send approvals. Steps 16 to 20 need the Manager, Admin or Owner role.
Steps
Step 1: Open the ticket with the vendor's invoice. In the right sidebar, scroll to Approvals and click Request.
Step 2: Open the Approver list and choose who should approve it.
Step 3: Under What's being approved, tick the files the approval covers. Add a Note for the approver if it helps, then click Send request. The approver gets a notification and an email with a one-time link to approve or reject.
Step 4: A banner across the ticket shows Awaiting approval from the approver, and the Approvals section lists the request. Whoever asked, or a Manager or Admin, can click Cancel request.
Step 5: In the ticket list, an Awaiting approval chip marks the ticket for everyone. The approver sees Needs your approval instead. Click Awaiting approval in the left sidebar.
Step 6: The Awaiting approval view lists every ticket with a pending approval.
Step 7: When the approver signs in, Home shows the approvals waiting on them, with who asked and which files. Click one to open the ticket.
Step 8: My approvals in the ticket sidebar also lists every request waiting on you, with the requester's note. Click a request to open its ticket.
Step 9: The banner on the ticket shows the request and its note. Add a Comment if you like, then click Approve or Reject.
Step 10: The decision is recorded in Approvals with the approver's name, the files it covers and the comment.
Step 11: To send the invoice to accounts payable, click New under Side conversations.
Step 12: Enter the AP email address in To, a subject and your message. Then open Include approval.
Step 13: Choose the approval to attach.
Step 14: The files the approval covers are ticked for you, and the approval is added when the email is sent. Untick anything you don't want to send, then click Send.
Step 15: The side conversation shows your message with a green block naming the approver, the date, the files and the comment, followed by the invoice. AP's replies come back here, never into the customer's conversation. Click Mark done when it's finished.
Step 16: To request approvals automatically, open Settings → Automation and click Create Rule.
Step 17: Give the rule a name and choose a trigger, for example Ticket Created with Subject Contains
invoice. Under Actions, choose Request Approval and pick the approver. Click Create Rule.Step 18: To act on decisions, create a rule with the Approval Approved or Approval Rejected trigger. This one adds the tag
approved. You could also assign the ticket to your AP team.Step 19: Both rules are listed and active.
Step 20: The next matching ticket gets its approval request automatically, covering the ticket's files. It shows asked by Automation and the rule's name.
Tips
- You can approve without a request: if you're the approver, click Approve in the Approvals section to record your approval directly.
- The emailed link works once and expires after 7 days. The approver can still decide in the app.
- An approval can also be attached to an internal note: switch the composer to Note and use Include approval.
- A rule won't ask the same approver twice while their approval is pending or approved. After a rejection, it can ask again the next time it runs.
- When a rule asked for the approval, the decision notification goes to the ticket's assignee.