Approval workflow

The invoice is not slow because of AP. It is sitting with a regional.

In multifamily the approver is rarely at a desk. Routing has to assume that, escalate when it is true, and leave a record of who cleared what.

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61.8 minutes average speed to submission across 2,665 invoices.

Routing

Built around how approvals actually happen.

Approval time is the cheap part. Approval latency is what closes a discount window and delays a close.

A capex invoice partway through its approval chain. The property manager approved at 9:12 AM and the regional manager at 11:40 AM. The third step, the capex director, is still pending and shows it escalates in 41 hours. A footer notes the invoice posts to ResMan on the last approval.
The chain shows where the invoice actually is, and the escalation clock runs whether or not anyone is watching it.

Multi-tier chains

Configure property manager to regional to CapEx director, with the path depending on amount, property, and expense type.

Trusted vendor bypass

Routine utility bills from known vendors skip approval entirely. Bypass rules deliberately do not apply to anything matched to a purchase order.

Auto-escalation

An approver on vacation stops being a bottleneck. The invoice moves to the alternate rather than aging in an inbox nobody is watching.

Full audit trail

Capture, coding, every approval, and the posting are timestamped and attributed. Reviews stop being a reconstruction exercise.

Exceptions

Only the ones that need judgment.

Most invoices should never reach an approver at all. The ones that do should arrive with the reason attached.

  • My approvals inbox per approver, with aging visible

  • Company-wide pending board for admins, with re-routing

  • Assignments grid per property and role, empty cells flagged

  • Purchase order match review, accepted or rejected with a reason

  • Approval bottlenecks bucketed under 1 day, 1 to 3 days, over 3 days

What changed at ResProp

BillRoute has elevated our AP process. Internal processing takes far less effort, and invoice approvals move noticeably faster.

Jay Snyder

VP of Procurement

FAQ

Approval questions

How is this different from the /features overview?
The features page is a tour of everything BillRoute does. This page is only about approval routing, which is the part that decides how fast an invoice actually moves in a multifamily portfolio.
Can approval chains differ by property?
Yes. Assignments are configured per property and per role, and the grid shows you where a cell is empty. An empty cell means nobody is on deck, which is how invoices silently age.
What stops a bypass rule from being abused?
Bypass applies to specific vendors you designate, and it never applies to purchase-order-matched invoices. Every bypass is still recorded in the audit trail, so the exception is visible rather than invisible.
How do we find where approvals are stuck?
The spend and procurement analytics page buckets approval time into under one day, one to three days, and over three days, by property and approver. That tells you whether you have a routing problem or a staffing problem.
Do approvers need to log in?
There is a My Approvals inbox for each approver and a company-wide pending board for admins, who can re-route when someone is unavailable. Speed to submission on the reference portfolio runs at 61.8 minutes.

Map your approval chain with us.

Bring your current routing, including the exceptions nobody wrote down. We will show you what it looks like configured.

Book a demosales@billroute.com