Who is the new integration for?

ApprovalMax and Receipt Bank already work together seamlessly in the Xero ecosystem because of Xero’s ability to differentiate between document statuses. This allows Receipt Bank to simply enter new bills into Xero with the “Awaiting Approval” status to make sure that ApprovalMax automatically picks them up for review and approval.

However, this integration scheme does have some drawbacks. For instance, bills that have run through the review and approval process but were rejected will remain visible in Xero. Also, there can be duplicate bills, which are identified during the ApprovalMax review and approval process. They are marked as rejected and pushed to Xero in “Draft” status; a report with the rejection reason is sent to the respective user by email. While this is fine for some organisations, others prefer to keep a neat general ledger and not have rejected duplicate bills in Xero.

The direct Receipt Bank to ApprovalMax integration

In the new direct integration scheme Receipt Bank doesn’t publish bills to Xero but instead to ApprovalMax, which will do some checks before initiating the appropriate review and approval process. On approval completion only documents that have been fully approved will be published to Xero in the “Awaiting Payment” status. If rejected, bills can either be resubmitted in Receipt Bank or just be stored as “Rejected” in ApprovalMax – and never enter Xero.

How does it work?

First, you need to configure Receipt Bank so that the digitally captured invoices are published to ApprovalMax instead of Xero. Next, Receipt Bank gets connected to ApprovalMax. Please note: ApprovalMax must already be connected to Xero before you connect Receipt Bank to ApprovalMax.

When all is set up correctly, the process looks like this:

After extracting the relevant invoice data, Receipt Bank enters the information into the bill fields and attaches an invoice scan to the digital invoice copy before publishing it to ApprovalMax for authorisation.

In ApprovalMax, each invoice is routed to the appropriate manager with the specified authorisation level as determined in the approval matrix and the approval workflow.

Once approved via the web or mobile app, bills are assigned the “Awaiting Payment” status and published to Xero. A notification about the successful authorisation is sent to the specified address.

A detailed audit report containing the approvers’ names and dates etc. is created automatically and attached to each approved document. It can be accessed directly from Xero.

If you have bills or expenses that don’t require an approval, you can still use the Receipt Bank to ApprovalMax configuration. The approval workflow in ApprovalMax can be set up in a way that documents which don’t need to go through the approval process are identified as such and published to Xero straight away.

What are the core benefits of this direct integration?

Bills cannot be pushed to Xero unless they’ve been authorised, so there will never be any rejected bills in the accounting system. Having only approved bills that are awaiting payment in the general ledger keeps it neat and tidy.

It also helps to decrease the risk of human error. Because bills can only enter Xero once they’ve been fully approved in strict accordance with the approval matrix set up in ApprovalMax, it’s impossible for someone to authorise bills in Xero incorrectly – be it by mistake or intent.

What is ApprovalMax?

ApprovalMax extends the online accounting platform Xero with approval-driven financial controls for Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. It replaces paper- and email-based approvals with fully automated multi-role and multi-tiered approval workflows, and ensures spend control and regulatory compliance for both internal accounting and financial service outsourcing organisations.

• Automation of multi-step and role-based approvals
• Purchase order management, Bill-to-PO matching
• Fraud prevention, reporting, transparent audit trails

What is Receipt Bank?

Receipt Bank helps simplify and automate routines in bookkeeping. Receipts and invoices can be submitted using a range of methods, including the award-winning app, email, and direct upload. Receipt Bank extracts the key data from each item and either stores it for approval or publishes it automatically to a range of cloud software.

• Automated item submission and data entry
• Audit-compliant images of all receipts and invoices
• Large numbers of expenses managed fast and at scale