Approving a bill

A bill has to be approved before it can be paid, and the approval is enforced by the server — not by the button being hidden in the browser.

Approving a bill:
1. Go to Accounting → Payables → Bills (AP) and open a Draft bill.
2. Click Approve.
3. An inline confirmation appears — confirm it.
4. You get an "Bill approved" confirmation and the bill moves to Approved.

An approval is bound to the terms you approved:
When you approve, the platform records what you actually signed off on: this bill, this vendor, this amount, and this destination (the vendor's bank details on file). If any one of those changes afterwards, every prior approval on the bill is void and it must be approved again. You will see the reason in plain words: the amount, the vendor, or the vendor's bank account no longer matches what was signed off.

This is the control that stops the oldest trick in accounts payable — get a small, unremarkable bill approved, then quietly change the amount or redirect the bank details before it goes out. Here, changing any of those un-approves the bill.

Approvals are append-only. An approval is recorded as its own event rather than a field on the bill, so the history of who approved what terms cannot be edited away.

Thresholds and a second approver:
Your org can require more scrutiny above a dollar amount, configured in your Bill Pay settings. Above the threshold you may see:
• Bills at or above the threshold require admin or accountant approval.
• Larger amounts require two different approvers on the same terms — the same person approving twice does not satisfy it, and the second approval may need to come from an admin.

Possible duplicates:
If a bill looks like one already in your books, the server refuses the approval until a human confirms it. You will see a "Possible duplicate" panel with the reason and which bill it matches, and two choices: "Yes, approve anyway" or Cancel. Bills flagged this way also carry a "Dup?" pill in the bill list. The acknowledgement is recorded on the approval event, so there is a record that someone looked at it and decided.

Nothing here is a dead end — every refusal tells you what it wants. Approve again after a change, get a second approver, or confirm the duplicate, and the bill moves on.