Automate bill reviews with AP Approval Workflows

Overview

AP Approval Workflows let you automatically route vendor bills to the right team members for review before payment. You define the rules, based on bill amount, vendor, business unit, or other criteria, and ServiceTitan routes each bill accordingly. Bills that don't meet any approval threshold are auto-approved, so your team focuses only on the bills that matter.

Things to know

• Payables must be enabled before you can use AP Approval Workflows. See Set up Payables.

• Approval workflows apply when a bill is submitted for approval. They do not retroactively affect bills that already exist in your account.

• When a bill is routed to an approver, ServiceTitan sends an email notification to the approver. Approvers can approve or deny the bill directly from the email.

• If a bill has a discrepancy, for example, a unit cost discrepancy, the discrepancy details are visible to the approver during the review.

• All status changes on a bill, including who submitted it, who approved or denied it, and any denial reasons, are recorded in the bill's audit trail.

• You can set up only one approval workflow.

Best practices

• Define approval thresholds by dollar amount to auto-approve low-risk bills and route higher-value bills to the appropriate stakeholders.

• Use business unit conditions when your company operates multiple business units with different approval requirements.

• Include a fallback action in every workflow, either auto-approve or route to an approver, to ensure every bill is handled, even if no step conditions are met.

• Keep approval chains short and sequential: route to a Controller for mid-range bills, then to a CFO or owner only for high-value bills.

• Use the Approver: Assigned to me filter on the Bills screen to quickly see all bills waiting for your approval.

Use cases

• A company wants any bill over $1,000 reviewed by their Controller, and any bill over $10,000 to also require CFO sign-off. Bills under $1,000 are auto-approved.

• A multi-business-unit company routes bills from the HVAC division to one approver and bills from the Plumbing division to another.

• A company wants all bills from a specific vendor flagged for review regardless of amount, to monitor spending.

• An accounting manager wants bills with discrepancies to always require manual approval, rather than being auto-approved.

Set up an AP approval workflow

To set up an AP approval workflow, you define the conditions that trigger approval and assign the appropriate approvers. You can add multiple steps to create a sequential approval chain.

1. Go to the top toolbar and click Settings .

2. In the side panel, go to Your Account > Bill Approval Workflow. 

3. Click Create Workflow. The workflow builder opens.

4. In the Step 1 section, click the If dropdown and select a condition. The following conditions are available:

   1. bill total is

   2. business unit is

   3. vendor is

   4. bill is attached to a PO

   5. bill has discrepancies

   6. bill connected to project 

5. Configure the condition. For example, if you selected bill total is, select an operator, such as Greater than or equal to, and enter a dollar amount.

6. Click the Then dropdown and select the action for bills that meet this condition.        

   1. Require approval from: Select the approver(s) for bills that match the step condition.

   2. Continue to next step: Pass the bill to the next step in the workflow without requiring approval at this step. 

7. (Optional) To add more steps to the workflow, click + Add Step and repeat steps 4–6 for each additional step.

8. In the If none of the above apply section, click the Then dropdown and select the fallback action for bills that don't match any step condition.        

   1. Auto-approve the bill: Bills that don't match any step are automatically approved.

   2. Require approval from: Select an approver for all remaining bills. 

9. When finished, click Save Workflow.        

   Note: After you save the workflow, it applies to all bills submitted for approval going forward. Existing bills are not affected. If the workflow is changed while a bill is currently awaiting approval, the bill follows the steps of the previous workflow, not the changed one.

Submit a bill for approval

After the workflow is configured, bills that require approval must be submitted before they can be reconciled and paid.

Submit a single bill for approval

1. Go to the navigation bar and click Accounting.

2. In the side panel, click Bills.

3. Open the bill you want to submit.

4. Click Submit for Approval. A confirmation dialog opens, showing the approval rule that applies and any discrepancies on the bill. 

5. Review the details, then click Submit for Approval. The bill status updates to Pending Approval, and the assigned approver receives an email notification.

Submit multiple bills for approval in bulk

1. Go to the navigation bar and click Accounting.

2. In the side panel, click Bills.

3. On the Needs Review tab, select the checkboxes next to the bills you want to submit. 

4. Click Send for Approval. A confirmation dialog opens for the first bill, showing the applicable workflow rule and any discrepancies.

5. For each bill, click Submit for Approval to confirm, or click Skip to skip that bill and move to the next one. 

6. After reviewing all bills, click Close.

Review and approve or deny a bill

Approvers can review and act on bills from within ServiceTitan or directly from the email notification.

Review and act on a bill in ServiceTitan

1. Go to the navigation bar and click Accounting.

2. In the side panel, click Bills.

3. Click the Pending Approval tab.

4. (Optional) To see only bills assigned to you, click the Approver dropdown and select Assigned to me, then click Apply. 

5. Click the bill you want to review. The bill record opens, showing vendor invoice details, line items, and any discrepancies.

6. Click Approve or Deny.        

   1. If you click Approve: A confirmation dialog opens showing any discrepancies on the bill. Review the details, then click Approve Bill to confirm. 

   2. If you click Deny: A dialog opens. Select a denial reason, add comments if needed, and click Deny to confirm. 

      Note: When you approve a bill that has discrepancies, ServiceTitan shows you the discrepancy details before you confirm. Approving a discrepant bill acknowledges and accepts the discrepancy.

Review and act on a bill from email

When a bill is routed to you for approval, ServiceTitan sends an email from APapprovals@ServiceTitan.com with the subject line Approval Needed on Bill #[Bill Number].

The email includes the bill details, line items, and any discrepancy information.

• Click Approve to approve the bill.

• Click Deny to deny the bill.        

  Note: Approving or denying a bill from email updates the bill status in ServiceTitan immediately.

View the bill audit trail

To see a full history of a bill's approval status changes, open the bill record and click the audit trail icon.

The audit trail records every status change, including who submitted the bill, who approved or denied it, denial reasons, and comments.

Want to learn more?

• See Set up Payables

• See Approve and pay bills and statements

• See Create non-purchase order bills

• See Reconcile statements