Your company can require a second person to approve the money UnitConnect moves: an ACH payment it sends, or a check it prints. The payment waits until someone who can approve payments approves it. Recording a payment made another way (a check written by hand, bank bill pay, a card) never waits.

Note

Approvals apply only when an administrator turns them on in Admin › Accounts payable › Payment approvals; see Accounts payable settings. Approving needs the Approve expense payments permission and access to the property. The Administrator role has it; other roles can be given it in Users.

How a payment comes to wait

When a rule covers a payment, the button that would send or print it asks for approval instead:

  • Request approval to send $… by ACH in Pay expense, or Record & request approval to send $… when you record a new expense.
  • Request approval to print for a check.

Nothing is sent, printed or recorded yet. The expense stays unpaid, and every approver for the property is told:

  • In the bell straight away: A payment is waiting for your approval. This one can't be turned off.
  • By email, combined: payments asked for close together come as one email listing them all, grouped by the bank account they come from, with a Review and approve button. It goes once no new request has come for 5 minutes, and no later than 15 minutes after the first.
  • On the home page, under Needs attention: a count of the payments waiting for your approval, which opens the Approval needed tab.

While a payment waits, the expense can't be paid another way and its amounts can't be changed; notes and attachments still can.

Approve or reject one payment

Open the expense. A card at the top shows the payment: ACH payment or Check, the badge Approval needed, the amount, the accounts it goes from and to, the date asked for, and who asked.

  • Approve $… — the payment goes ahead exactly as it was asked for. An ACH payment is sent (or scheduled for its date). A check becomes Approved · ready to print, and whoever can pay expenses prints it with Print check or Print approved check; printing records the payment.
  • Reject — say why (Why is it rejected?) and click Reject payment. The person who asked is told why, and the expense can be paid again.
  • Withdraw — the person who asked, or an approver, takes the request back. The expense can then be paid another way.

The person who asked is told, in the bell and by email, when their payment is approved, rejected or cancelled.

Each person chooses how these reach them in Admin › Notifications › Event notifications, under Expenses: Payment waiting for approval and Payment approved or rejected. See Notification settings.

If the expense changed after the payment was asked for — a different amount, bank account, or new vendor bank details — the card says so and it can't be approved as it is. Reject it so it can be asked for again.

Approve several at once

In Expenses, click Queue, then the Approval needed tab. It lists every payment waiting, with how it is paid (ACH · sends … or Check · …), the account it comes From and who Requested by it.

  1. Tick the payments to approve. Payments you asked for yourself have no box.
  2. Click Approve N payments.
  3. Check the totals, grouped by bank account and by ACH or checks, and click Approve.

Each payment is approved on its own: ACH payments go to the bank, checks wait to be printed. If one can't be approved, the others still are, and the result lists which one and why.

Approving your own payment

Someone else who can approve payments has to approve a payment you asked for. When you are the only person who can approve payments for the property, your company decides. By default your payment goes ahead without waiting and is recorded as self-approved; with Let a property's only approver approve their own payments turned off, it waits until someone else can approve it.

When a request is cancelled for you

UnitConnect checks waiting requests every day. A request whose expense was deleted, paid another way, or changed is cancelled, and the person who asked is told why.