How to Automate Invoice Approval Without Writing Code

Here's how invoice approval works at most small businesses: an invoice arrives by email. Someone downloads the PDF, enters the details into a spreadsheet, and forwards it to a manager. The manager reads it sometime between now and Thursday. If they approve, they reply "ok" or "approved" — which then needs to be manually recorded. If they're on vacation, the invoice sits in limbo. Meanwhile, the supplier sends a reminder.

This process takes roughly 45 minutes per week for a typical SMB handling 20-30 invoices. That's 39 hours per year spent on email forwarding and spreadsheet updates. At EUR 50 per hour, you're looking at EUR 1,950 annually — for a single process that could run itself.

What the automated process looks like

In an automated system, the flow is: invoice arrives, data is captured, routing rules apply automatically, the right person gets notified, approval is recorded with a timestamp, and confirmation goes out. Total human involvement: reviewing and clicking "approve." About 5 minutes per week instead of 45.

Building it in LedgerSoft: step by step

Step 1: Create an Invoices table

Start with a table that captures everything you need for each invoice. You can use the built-in Invoices template or create one from scratch. The key fields:

• Invoice Number (text) — the supplier's invoice reference
• Supplier (linked record) — links to your Contacts table
• Amount (currency, EUR) — the invoice total
• Due Date (date) — when payment is due
• Status (select) — Draft, Pending Approval, Approved, Rejected, Paid
• Approver (user) — who needs to approve this invoice
• Notes (text) — any context for the approver

Each record is a single invoice. No more spreadsheet rows that accidentally get deleted or sorted into the wrong order.

Step 2: Set up the approval routing flow

Create a flow with the trigger: "When Status changes to Pending Approval." Then add conditions based on your business rules:

• If Amount is greater than EUR 5,000 — assign to the Finance Director and send a notification: "Invoice #[number] from [supplier] for EUR [amount] requires your approval."
• If Amount is EUR 5,000 or less — assign to the Team Lead with the same notification.

The notification arrives in the approver's inbox (email or in-app) with a direct link to the invoice record. One click to review, one click to approve or reject.

Step 3: Automate the post-approval actions

Create a second flow: "When Status changes to Approved." This flow handles everything that happens after approval:

• Send a confirmation email to the supplier contact
• Update the payment schedule
• If the invoice is due within 7 days, create a task in your payments queue

Step 4: Add an overdue reminder

Create a scheduled flow: "Every morning, check for invoices where Status is Approved, Due Date is today or past, and Status is not Paid." For each match, send a reminder to the finance team: "Invoice #[number] is due today — EUR [amount] to [supplier]."

No more manually scanning the spreadsheet for overdue items. The system handles it.

Step 5: Build a dashboard

Create a dashboard view with three widgets:

• Pending Approvals — filtered list of invoices in "Pending Approval" status, sorted by due date
• Total Outstanding — sum of all approved but unpaid invoices
• Overdue Count — count of invoices past their due date

Open the dashboard once a day to see your financial picture at a glance. No report to build, no spreadsheet to refresh.

Before and after

What this really saves you

The time saving is 40 minutes per week, which adds up to about 35 hours per year. At EUR 50 per hour, that's EUR 1,750 in recovered time — from a single process.

The time saving matters, but the reliability matters more. Invoices stop getting lost in email threads. Approvals don't get forgotten when someone's on vacation. Overdue payments don't slip through because nobody checked the spreadsheet. The system runs whether you're looking at it or not.

In LedgerSoft, you can build this entire flow in about 5 minutes. No code, no consultants, no six-week implementation project. Just tables, rules, and a flow that does what you used to do manually.