Overview
AP Approval Workflow automatically routes vendor bills to the right team members for review before payment or export. You define rules based on bill amount, vendor, business unit, or other criteria, and ServiceTitan routes each bill accordingly. Bills that don't meet your configured approval thresholds are automatically approved, reducing manual reviews while ensuring exceptions are routed for approval.
Who uses this feature
Administrators, accountants, bookkeepers, and managers
Applies to all business types
Applies to all trades
Feature configuration
Account configuration is required to use this feature. Please contact Technical Support for details.
The Configure Approval Workflows permission is required to set up and manage approval workflows. Please contact the account administrator on your team.
Things to know
Payables must be enabled before you can use AP Approval Workflows. For more, see Set up Accounts Payable.
Approval workflows apply when a bill is submitted for approval. They do not retroactively affect previously reconciled bills.
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.
Only one approval workflow can be configured. That workflow can contain multiple approval steps, all of which are evaluated for each bill submitted for approval.
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 continue to the next step 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
Go to the top toolbar and click Settings
.In the side panel, go to Accounting > Bill Approval Workflow.
Click Create Workflow. The workflow builder opens.
In the Step 1 section, click the If dropdown and select a condition. The following conditions are available:
bill total is
business unit is
vendor is
bill is attached to a PO
bill has discrepancies
bill connected to project
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.
Click the Then dropdown and select the action for bills that meet this condition:
Require approval from: Select the approver(s) for bills that match the step condition. You can assign a specific person or a role. See Choose a person or a role as the approver for how each option behaves.
Continue to next step: Pass the bill to the next step in the workflow without requiring approval at this step.
(Optional) To add more steps to the workflow, click + Add Step and repeat steps 4–6 for each additional step.
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:
Auto-approve the bill: Bills that don't match any step are automatically approved.
Require approval from: Select an approver for all remaining bills.
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.
Choose a person or a role as the approver
When you select Require approval from, you can assign the approver as a specific person or as a role.
User: The bill routes to that one individual. Only they can approve or deny the bill at this step.
Role: The bill routes to a role rather than a named individual. Select the role from the list, such as Accounting, Field Manager, Admin, Project Manager, or PO Creator. For standard employee roles, any user assigned that role can approve or deny the bill. For roles tied to the bill, such as PO Creator or Project Manager, the role resolves to the specific person who fills that role for the bill when it is submitted.
Approvers need the View Bills & Statements permission to see and act on bills routed to them. If an assigned person or role does not have it, ServiceTitan prompts you to grant it: for a specific person, the permission is granted to that individual; for an employee role, it is granted to the role and applies to everyone assigned to it.
Submit a bill for approval
After the workflow is configured, bills that require approval must be submitted before they can be reconciled and paid or exported.
Submit a single bill for approval
Go to the navigation bar and click Accounting.
In the side panel, click Bills.
Open the bill you want to submit.
Click Submit for Approval. A confirmation dialog opens, showing the approval rule that applies and any discrepancies on the bill.
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
Go to the navigation bar and click Accounting.
In the side panel, click Bills.
On the Needs Review tab, select the checkboxes next to the bills you want to submit.
Click Send for Approval. A confirmation dialog opens for the first bill, showing the applicable workflow rule and any discrepancies.
For each bill, click Submit for Approval to confirm, or click Skip to skip that bill and move to the next one.
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.
Approve or deny a bill as an administrator
Administrators can approve or deny any bill that is pending approval, including bills assigned to another approver. This lets an administrator keep bills moving when the assigned approver is unavailable.
Go to the navigation bar and click Accounting.
In the side panel, click Bills.
Click the Pending Approval tab.
Click the bill you want to act on. The bill record opens, showing vendor invoice details, line items, and any discrepancies.
Click Approve or Deny.
Note: When an administrator approves or denies a bill assigned to another approver, the action is recorded in the bill's audit trail along with the administrator's name.
Review and act on a bill in ServiceTitan
Go to the navigation bar and click Accounting.
In the side panel, click Bills.
Click the Pending Approval tab.
(Optional) To see only bills assigned to you, click the Approver dropdown and select Assigned to me, then click Apply.
Click the bill you want to review. The bill record opens, showing vendor invoice details, line items, and any discrepancies.
Click Approve or Deny.
If you click Approve: A confirmation dialog opens showing any discrepancies on the bill. Review the details, then click Approve Bill to confirm.
If you click Deny: A dialog opens. Add a comment, then click Deny Bill 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.
What happens when you unreconcile an approved bill
If you unreconcile a bill that was already approved, the bill loses its Approved status and returns to the Needs Review tab. The Bill approved by... banner no longer appears, and the bill must be submitted for approval again before it can be reconciled and paid.
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 and comments.