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From inbox to approved, with proof at every step.

This page walks one bill through ApproveAP, from the email it arrives in to the record your payor acts on.

Step 1, Intake

Bills arrive the way they always have.

Your company gets its own ApproveAP address, and your existing vendor-facing mailbox redirects to it automatically. Vendors change nothing. Bills from unknown senders wait in a holding queue until your admin approves the sender. Nothing unvetted reaches the parser.

Incoming

From: billing@officepartners.com

To: bills@yourcompany.com

Subject: Invoice INV-10045, July services

PDFinvoice-10045.pdf

Step 2, Reading

The AI reads the invoice. A person stays in charge.

Vendor, invoice number, amount, and dates are extracted from the document, and every figure traces back to the page it came from. If the line items do not add up to the total, the bill goes to a review queue instead of into the chain. The AI proposes. It never approves and never corrects a document on its own.

What the system read

In Review
Vendor
Office Partners Ltd.
Invoice number
INV-10045
Amount
$4,850.00
Due date
Aug 15, 2026

Line items match the total. Ready for your review queue.

Step 3, Approval chain

Approvals in order, by amount.

Your admin sets the amount tiers and who approves at each one. Approvers are emailed in sequence, one digest per approver per day covering everything waiting on them. Once a bill starts its chain, later changes to the routing never affect it. If a bill waits too long on one person, your admin is alerted.

Chain of custody, frozen when the bill enters approval

  1. Kristin P.

    First approver

    Jul 24, 9:12 AM

    Approved

  2. A. Director

    Over $5,000

    Jul 25, 8:40 AM

    Approved

  3. Board member

    Over $25,000

    Emailed Jul 25

    Waiting
  4. 4

    Payor report

    After chain completes

    Waiting

    Not yet reached

Step 4, Vendor check

Changed banking details stop the bill.

ApproveAP keeps every set of banking details it has ever seen for each vendor. A known vendor showing new details is a hard stop: the chain never starts and the payor never sees the bill. Your admin sees the old details next to the new ones, verifies the change with the vendor, and releases the bill. Every release is on the record.

Vendor check

Held

The account number on this invoice does not match any banking details seen for Office Partners Ltd. The bill is held. No approver has been emailed.

Release requires an admin to record how the change was verified with the vendor.

Step 5, The record

What the payor receives.

An approved-to-pay report where every bill carries its complete approval chain, with names, timestamps, and the original invoice document archived permanently. Approved bills also come out as an entry list formatted to match the QuickBooks Online bill screen. A direct QuickBooks sync is on the roadmap.

Payor view

Approved
Office Partners, INV-10045$4,850.00
  • Approved by Kristin P., Jul 24, 9:12 AM
  • Approved by A. Director, Jul 25, 8:40 AM
  • Original invoice attached

Watch a bill make the whole trip.

On the demo call we take a real invoice from email to approved record.

Request a Demo