Enter and approve a purchase invoice

Personas: AP clerk (registers the supplier's invoice), Approver (approves or rejects it from the Inbox), Payer (confirms the payment) · Modules: Purchase Invoices A supplier has sent you an invoice. You register it under its own (the supplier's) invoice number, your approver signs it off — which stamps your internal PUR registration number — and your payer marks it paid.

Before you start: the supplier must exist in Suppliers; your base company, currencies, payment methods and tax rates are pre-seeded. The approver must be in the Approver group and the payer in the Payer group (administrators can act in both).

1. Register the invoice — AP clerk

1. In the application shell open Purchases → Purchase Invoices and click + New top-right.
2. In the header enter the supplier's invoice number (required — this is the document's title: "PURCHASE INVOICE INV-2026-0451"). If the create dialog does not offer the field, save first and set it via Edit on the record — the title stays empty until it is filled.
3. Enter the invoice date (required), optionally the due date, and pick the Supplier (required). Company, Currency and Payment method (Bank transfer) come pre-filled — change them if needed. Save.
4. The invoice appears as DRAFT. Your internal registration number shows a temporary placeholder — you never type it; the real one comes after approval.
5. Open the document and add the lines with the items table's Add button, copying them off the supplier's paper: name, quantity, price (and discount if any), optionally a unit of measure. Pick a Tax rate — the VAT rate is copied from it (default 20%) and stays editable. Net, VAT and Total per line, and the Net / VAT / Discount / Total footer, calculate themselves.

2. Approve or reject — Approver (Inbox)

1. The Approve task is already waiting in the Approver group's Inbox (and inline on the invoice). Claim it.
2. The task form shows the supplier number, registration number, date, due, Supplier, total and Status, with Approve and Reject buttons.
3. Approve — the invoice becomes APPROVED and the sequential registration number from the shared "Purchase Invoice" series (prefix PUR) replaces the placeholder. A Pay task is created. Reject — the invoice becomes CANCELLED and the flow ends; no number is stamped.

3. Pay — Payer (Inbox)

1. The Pay task appears in the Payer group's Inbox. Claim it.
2. The task form shows the supplier number, registration number, Supplier, total, Payment method and Status, with a single Pay button.
3. Confirm the payment — the invoice becomes PAID. Done.

What happened behind the scenes

• Status path: DRAFT → (approve) APPROVED → (pay) PAID; reject → CANCELLED.
• The PUR registration number is drawn from the "Purchase Invoice" series in Document numbering only on approval — rejected invoices never consume a number.
• Header Net / VAT / Discount / Total are kept equal to the sums of the line items.
• The invoice now counts in Spend by Supplier, Monthly Supplier Spend and, until paid, the Unpaid Purchase Invoices counter on the dashboard.

Variations and refusals

• Reject at the approve step cancels the whole invoice (CANCELLED) — there is no rework loop; register a corrected invoice as a new document.
• There is no partial-payment tracking — Pay is one deliberate confirmation for the full amount (no settlement against payments, unlike the sales side).
• Anyone in the task's group (plus administrators) can claim and complete a task; an unclaimed task simply waits in the Inbox.

See also

• Purchase Invoices module
• Raise and approve a purchase order — the ordering step that usually precedes the supplier's bill.