Inventory and Order Management: Document Approval on the Invoices Form

In previous versions of MYOB Acumatica, the approval of invoices could be performed only on the Invoices and Memos (AR301000) form.

In the inventory and order management workflow, a user generates an invoice from a sales order or shipment, and the system creates it on the Invoices (SO303000) form. (Alternatively, a user can directly create an invoice on this form.) This document appears on the Invoices and Memos form only after it has been released. Thus, the sales invoices could not be approved.

MYOB Acumatica 2024.1.1 introduces the ability to configure the approval of documents that have been created on the Invoices (SO303000) form such as invoices, credit memos, debit memos, cash sales, and cash returns.

Note: The approval of documents is available only if the Approval Workflow feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.

Configuration of Approval

To provide the ability to configure the approval of documents on the Invoices (SO303000) form, the Invoices option has been added to the Entity Type box on the Approval Maps (EP205015) form, as shown in the screenshot below.

For this option, the system provides the same entities and fields for the configuration of conditions on the Conditions tab of the Approval Maps form as it does when the Invoices and Memos option is selected in the Entity Type box. On this tab, the user specifies the conditions that must be met for a document to be subject to approval.

The approval maps for documents created on the Invoices form cannot be applied to the AR documents created on the Invoices and Memos (AR301000) form; similarly, the opposite is true.

Important: Some of the fields in the drop-down list of the Field Name column (for example, Default Retainage Percent) on the Conditions tab of the Approval Maps form for the Invoices entity type have corresponding UI elements displayed only on the Invoices and Memos form. If the approval conditions for the Invoices entity type are based on these fields, the person who approves the document will not be able to view the values in the UI elements corresponding to these fields on the Invoices form.

The following screenshot shows an example of an approval map for documents that are created on the Invoices form. The condition for triggering the approval process is the amount of a document line that is greater than 50.

Figure 1. An approval map for documents on the Invoices form

On the Approval tab of the Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) form, the new Invoices table has been added. To enable the approval of documents created on the Invoices form, the user needs to add a new row to this table, and select the Active check box (see Item 1 in the following screenshot) in the row. The user then selects the type of the document in the Type column (Item 2) and the approval map in the Approval Map column (Item 3). The Type column contains the types of documents that can be created on the Invoices form; the map will be used for documents of only the specified type.

Additionally, the Require Approval check box has been removed from the Approval tab. Instead, the Active check box has been added to the tables; the approval map is used when this check box is selected.

Figure 2. The approval settings on the Sales Orders Preferences form

Approval Workflow

If the approval has been activated for a type of document on the Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) form, the system assigns the On Hold status to all new documents of this type on the Invoices (SO303000) form. The status is assigned to these documents regardless of the state of the Hold Invoices on Entry check box on the Order Types (SO201000) form for the order type of the sales order for which the system generates the invoice or the state of the Hold Documents on Entry check box on the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form.

If the document does not require approval based on the conditions specified in the approval map, after the user removes it from hold, the system automatically approves it and assigns the next status according to the document's workflow. If the document requires approval, the system assigns the Pending Approval status (see Item 1 in the following screenshot) to it. Also, on the form toolbar, the Approve and Reject buttons appear (Item 2). If the approver clicks Approve, the system assigns the document the next status according to the document's workflow. If the person clicks Reject, the system assigns the document the Rejected status.

A user can view information about the approval status and all assigned approvers on the new Approvals tab of the Invoices (SO303000) form (Item 3).

Figure 3. Approval of an invoice

An assigned approver can also approve or reject the sales invoices with the Pending Approval status on the Approvals (EP503010) form. After an invoice has been approved, only the following settings of the invoice can be edited on the Invoices form: the value in the Currency box in the Summary area, the values in the Payment Method and Cash Account boxes on the Financial tab, and the values in the Amount Paid and Write-Off Amount columns on the Applications tab.

If an invoice has been created on the Invoices (SO303000) form and the system assigns the Rejected status to it, the corresponding AR document does not appear on the Invoices and Memos (AR301000) form or Cash Sales (AR304000) form. Documents that have been created on the Invoices form and rejected by the approver, do not prevent the closing of the financial period in which they are dated. If a sales invoice created from a sales order is rejected, the link to the rejected invoice remains in the related sales order on the Shipments tab of the Sales Orders (SO301000) form, and the user can see a warning message about the invoice's rejected status.

Note: If the approval has been activated in the Invoices table on the Approvals tab of the Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) form for documents of the Credit Memo type, the system will do the following when a user corrects or cancels an invoice on the Invoices form:

If a user clicks Correct Invoice and then releases the created correction invoice, the system will automatically approve the cancellation credit memo that is created and released on the release of a correction invoice.
If the user clicks Cancel Invoice on the Invoices form, the system creates a cancellation credit memo that proceeds through approval in the same way as it would if the user created a new credit memo on the Invoices form and removed the document from hold.

System Behavior After the Upgrade

After the upgrade to MYOB Acumatica 2024.1.1, if any documents with the On Hold status exist on the Invoices (SO303000) form and the approval workflow is configured for these documents, they will go through the approval process once they are removed from hold. The documents with other statuses will not go through the approval process.