Payment Authorization
The Pending Payments to Authorize screen brings together, in one place, every payment leaving your bank accounts that is waiting for an authorizer's approval: Bill Payments, Account Payments, Vendor Prepayments and Bank-to-Bank Transfers. Instead of reviewing each document type separately, the authorizer gets a single inbox to approve or reject any pending payment.
What is it and what is it for?
When your company has the payment authorization workflow turned on, documents that move money out of your bank accounts don't affect the account balance or post to the ledger right away: they stay in Pending Authorization status until someone with the right permission approves them. This screen is that authorizer's work center, with three tabs:
- Pending Authorization: payments ready to be reviewed and approved or rejected.
- Rejected: payments an authorizer turned down; from here they can still be approved anyway, or sent back to pending so someone reviews them again.
- Draft: payments the creator left incomplete or saved to finish later; they aren't ready for an authorizer yet, so they can only be sent back to "Pending Authorization" (they can't be approved straight from the list).
This screen is where the My Payments to Authorize reminder on the main dashboard sends you: clicking it opens this screen already filtered to the payments assigned to you.
How to use it
- Open the screen. From the Banking menu or from the "Payments to Authorize" reminder on the main dashboard. It opens on the Pending Authorization tab by default; use the links at the top to switch to Rejected or Draft without leaving the screen.
- Filter the list. Narrow it down by date range, Subsidiary (if your plan has them enabled), Bank Account, Customer/Vendor/Relationship, assigned Authorizer, Document Number, Reference or Check Number. Click Refresh to reload the list with the chosen filters.
- Preview a payment. The eye-icon button opens a side panel showing the document's number, date, reference, relationship, currency, amount, notes and attachments, without opening the full document. From that same panel you can click View to open the full document in a new tab.
- Approve or reject it. You can do this two ways: with the row's own button (or by checking several rows and clicking the general Authorize button to approve them all at once), or with the Authorize and Reject buttons on the preview panel.
- Send a payment back to pending. On the Rejected and Draft tabs, the Send Back to Pending Authorization button returns it to the normal approval flow.
Columns and filters available
| Column / Filter | Description |
|---|---|
| Number | The document number; opens the full detail in a new tab. |
| Subsidiary | Only shown if your plan has Subsidiaries enabled. |
| Date and Days Since Creation | The document's date and how many days it has been waiting for authorization. |
| Document Type | Identifies whether it's a Bill Payment, Account Payment, Vendor Prepayment or Bank-to-Bank Transfer. |
| Reference and Check Number | Free-form reference data captured when the payment was created. |
| Beneficiary and Relationship | Who is being paid: a customer, vendor or employee, or a free-text name if it wasn't linked to a relationship. |
| Project | The related project/job costing record, if any. |
| Currency and Amount | The payment's currency and total amount. |
| Authorizer | The employee assigned to review and approve this payment; blank if nobody is assigned yet. |
All filters are optional and can be combined.
Availability and permissions
- Access to this screen and its actions is controlled by the "Payments" permission (Banking module) on the user group: the Authorize level is needed to approve or reject, and the Edit or Authorize level to send a payment back to pending.
- The Subsidiary column and filter only show up if your plan has Subsidiaries enabled.
- Assigning an authorizer to a payment (from the document itself) sends them a notification and an email, and the payment shows up on their "My Payments to Authorize" reminder.
Tips and common pitfalls
Preview before a bulk approval. If you're about to select several payments and approve them all at once with the general button, check each one's amount and attachments first with the preview button to avoid approving something by mistake.
A draft payment can't be approved straight from the list. It first needs to be sent back to "Pending Authorization" (by whoever created it or by the authorizer) so it shows up ready on that tab.
Rejecting a payment doesn't delete it. It only changes its status to "Rejected"; the document still exists and can be approved later, or sent back to pending so it gets corrected and resubmitted for review.