Usability

In the Tipalti Hub, the "Bills" tab consists of five subtabs: "Pending review", "Pending my approval", "Pending AP action", "Pending payment", and "All bills". If your organization is using the PO Matching feature, a sixth subtab, "PO matching" displays.

Your user roles and the configured bill flow type determine which screens are displayed and which actions you can perform. Some actions can only be performed on one bill at a time, whereas other actions can be applied to multiple bills at a time. Select a category listed below to reveal descriptions of the available actions.

Pending review subtab

Use the "Pending review" subtab to:

• Review bills ("Invoice processing" flow - Opens the "Invoice review" screen; "Self-billing" flows - Opens the "Bill details" screen)
• Release bills (self-billing flows)

Once review is complete, send the bill for approval, which assigns the bill a status of "Pending approval" or "Pending payee approval"/ "Pending payee invoice", depending on the bill flow. All approvers receive notification that bills are pending their approval.

Pending my approval subtab

Use the "Pending my approval" subtab for internal bill approval. The screen is only visible to users who have been assigned the Bill Approver role. It displays bills that are pending approval by the currently assigned approver. If it is not yet an approver's turn to approve the bill, that person will not see the bill on their "Pending my approval" subtab.

You can perform the following actions:

• Approve (all flows involving internal approval)
• Review and approve (both self-billing flows involving internal approval)
• Send bill back to AP (all flows involving internal approval)

If there are issues with the bill, you can send the bill back to AP who will update it.

Two columns, Coding status and Approval progress, display values that make it easy for you to determine the state of the bill and which bills can be mass approved.

Coding status

Coding status refers to whether GL accounts have been selected during the bill cycle.

• Ready for approval: Indicates that all bill lines have been assigned a GL account and the bill is ready to be approved
• Incomplete:
  • Indicates that one or more bill lines have not been assigned a GL account (bills cannot be approved until all lines have been assigned an account)
  • The approver needs to select "Review and approve" from the dropdown menu to access the "Bill approval" screen where the appropriate accounts can be assigned to the bill lines.
  • If you try to approve a bill that has a coding status of "Incomplete", a dialog displays advising you to select the appropriate accounts before approving the bill.

If a sequence of approvers has been assigned to approve a bill, all approvers except the last one in the sequence have the option of selecting "Account unknown" in the "Account" field. This selection does not prevent these approvers from approving the bill. However, if the user is the last approver in the sequence, they must select an existing account to be able to approve the bill.

Approval progress

Approval progress indicates the number of approvers who have approved the bill over the total number of approvers assigned to the bill. For example, a value of "1/ 3" means one approver has approved the bill out of a total of three approvers. Hovering over the value displays the approval progress tooltip, which shows the following information.

• Assigned bill approvers
• Order of approval (displays to the left of the approver name)
• Stage of approval (displays to the left of the approver name)
• Status change date (displays to the right of the approver name for the invoice processing flow). The status change date is the date the approver request email is sent or the date the approver replied to the email.

The following table describes the icons that appear to the left of an approver name, which provide full transparency to the progress of approval.

Icon	Approver status	Description
	Approved	The number refers to the order of approval. The "1" indicates this person is the 1st approver. The green check mark indicates the bill has been approved. Once approved, an approval request email is sent to the 2nd approver.
	Sent	The "2" indicates this person is the 2nd approver. The blue clock indicates the bill is pending approval - once approved, the icon changes to green with a check mark and an approval request email is sent to the 3rd approver.
	Pending	The "3" indicates this person is the 3rd approver. No check mark or clock indicates the 2nd approver has not approved the bill yet - once approved, the icon changes to solid blue with a clock, which means the bill is now pending approval from the 3rd approver.

Pending AP action subtab

If bills have been sent back to AP for any reason, these bills are assigned a status of "Pending AP action" and appear on the "Pending AP action" subtab. The AP Team uses this screen to perform the following actions:

• Review bills (invoice processing and self-billing flows)
• Mark as approved (self-billing flows involving payee approval)
• Mark invoice as received (self-billing flows involving payee approval)
• Release bills (self-billing flows)
• Approve bill on behalf (all flows involving internal approval)

In special circumstances, when the bill approver is unable to approve a bill, another person in your organization may approve the bill on their behalf, as long as they have been assigned the Approval Management user role. This person must provide a reason for bypassing the normal "Approval" flow. Approved bills are assigned a status of "Pending payment" and are forwarded to the "Pending payment" subtab.

Assigning the ability to approve a bill on behalf of another approver is optional. You do not have to allow anyone to have this ability, as this action may be open to fraudulent activity.

Pending payment subtab

Use the "Pending payment" subtab to pay bills, or pay partial amounts. If bills are to be paid manually, do not pay bills from this screen. Instead, update the bill status to "Paid" by selecting the action "Mark bill as paid manually". Bills with a status of "Paid" can only be viewed from the "All bills" subtab.

The AP Team can also use the "Pending payment" subtab to retract internal or payee approval, if required.

All Bills subtab

The "All bills" subtab displays all bills in any status. Therefore, you can perform any action from this screen, as long as the bill status supports the action. Consider the following use cases.

• If bill approval has been pending for a while or AP is still waiting for an approval/ invoice from the payee, they can send a reminder from this screen. They can also cancel the bill approval request, if the bill is in "Pending payee approval" status or cancel the payee approval/ invoice request, if the bill is in "Pending payee approval" or "Pending payee invoice" status.
• If the payee is not responsive and the bill is still pending the payee's approval/ invoice or the bill is in "Pending AP action" status, AP can mark the invoice as approved/ received by the payee.
• If a user who is not part of the AP Team has been provided the Approval Management role to approve bills on behalf of the designated approvers, then they can perform this action from the "All bills" subtab.
• If AI Smart Scan scanning is pending and you want to hasten the process, you can process the bill manually from this screen.
• If PO matching is enabled, bills that are "Pending matching" with a purchase order appear only on this screen. These bills can be viewed, deleted or disputed.

If you use solely the Tipalti bills flow to manage bills, then only the "All bills" and "Pending payment" subtabs are visible.

Other actions

Invoices may contain errors that need adjustments, such as incorrect totals or missing information. You may even receive an invoice from a payee that is not valid. In such cases, you can dispute or delete the bill. Bills can be deleted during the "Bill feeding" flow, whereas disputes can be made during the "Bill feeding" or "Approval" flow.

Dispute bills

Only bills in the "Invoice processing" flow, in the following statuses, can be disputed:

• Pending review
• Pending approval
• Pending AP action
• Pending matching
• Review matching

The dispute action is found on the corresponding screens. You must provide a reason for dispute, after which an email notification with the dispute reason is sent to the payee. Notification will prompt the payee to contact the payer to resolve the dispute.

Disputed bills are assigned a status of "Disputed" and can only be viewed on the "All bills" subtab. If you have disputed a bill in error, you can undo dispute of the bill.

Delete bills

Perform the delete action on one or multiple bills from any screen. Bills can be deleted any time prior to submitting the bill to Tipalti for payment. Once submitted, the bill cannot be deleted.

Deleted bills are not erased from the system, but instead, are hidden on the "All bills" subtab. To view deleted bills, filter the bills by "Deleted" bill status. If you have deleted a bill in error, you can undo delete of the bill.

Download invoice

In the "Invoice processing" flow, you can download an invoice from any screen on the "Bills" tab.

View bills

You can view bills from any screen on the "Bills" tab, if you do not have the required role to review bills.

GL account selection

For the "Invoice processing" flow, GL account selection is required. For the "Self-billing" flows, payers have the option of enabling GL account selection during configuration of the Bills module with our Support Team.

Invoice processing

The GL account must be selected from one of the following locations:

• On the "Invoice review" screen
• In the approval request email sent to the designated bill approvers
• On the "Bill approval" screen