Transaction Approval Workflow

Once transaction approval has been set up, users in your organization can start creating and submitting transactions for approval. Let’s see how transaction approval works for both sales and purchase transactions:

In this page…

Transaction Approval in Sales and Purchases Modules

Once you enable transaction approval for sales modules, it will be open for Invoices, Quotes, Sales Orders, Credit Notes and Retainer Invoices. Only when a transaction is approved, the user will be able to perform the following actions on it:

Field Actions
Invoice Mark Invoice as Sent, Record Payments, Apply Credits, Create Shipping Bill, Write Off, Use Retainer Invoice and Email Invoice.
Quote Mark Quote as Sent, Convert to Invoice, Convert to Sales Order and Email Quote.
Sales Order Convert to Invoice, Convert to Open and Email Sales Order. You will also be able to Create Package and Create Shipment for the sales order if your Zoho Books account is integrated with Zoho Inventory.
Credit Note Convert to Open, Record Refund, Apply Credits and Send Email.
Retainer Invoice Mark Retainer Invoices as Sent, Record Refund and Send Email.

Similarly, once you enable transaction approval for purchase modules, it will be available for your Purchase Orders, Bills and Vendor Credits. Only when a transaction is approved, the user will be able to do the following actions on the particular purchase module:

Field Description
Bill Record Payments and create and,Vendor Credits.
Vendor Credit Record Refund and Apply Credit to Bills
Purchase Order Convert to Open and Convert to Bill

The transaction approval workflow for sales and purchase modules involves two important steps:

  1. Submitting for Approval
  2. Approving Sales Transactions

Submitting for Approval

The first step to create and submit transactions for approval.

To do this:

Transaction Approval

You will receive a notification once your transaction is approved.

Approving Transactions

As soon as transactions are submitted for approval, the admins and approvers will be able to approve them. You can approve your transactions depending upon the approval preferences you’ve set up. 

Direct Approval

As soon as transactions are submitted for approval, a single admin/approver will be able to approve them.

Note: If you had opted to notify your approvers upon submission, the approvers will be sent a notification.

To approve the transactions the approver or admin should:

Transaction Approval

Pro Tip: You can quickly view the transactions pending for approval or approved transactions by selecting the filter Pending Approval or Approved.

The Approver will be able to approve the transactions they create by selecting Save and Approve.

Transaction Approval

Once the transaction has been approved, the users of the organization will be able to perform all actions associated with the sales and purchases module as mentioned above.

Multi-Level Approval

If you had set up a multi-level approval process, the transaction will be submitted and approved based on the decision of two or more approvers.

To approve the transactions the approver or admin should:

Transaction Approval

The Approver can click Save and Submit for further verification by other approvers.

Transaction Approval

Final Approve

All users who are admins in Zoho Books are considered as final approvers. Final approvers will be able to override other approvers and approve a transaction if it requires multi-level approvals.

To override other approvers and approve a transaction (if you are not one of the approvers of transaction but an admin in the organization):

Open a transaction that has been submitted,

To override other approvers and approve a transaction (if you are one of the approvers with admin access):

Transaction Approval

Reject Transactions

Admins and approvers can reject a transaction that has been submitted to them for approval. 

Pro-tip: If you do not want to reject a transaction, you still want the submitter to edit the transaction, you can convert a transaction to a draft by entering a reason.

By doing so, the submitter of the transaction can make the necessary changes and re-submit the transaction for approval.

To reject a transaction:

Transaction Approval Transaction Approval

Next >
Manage Approvals

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