Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: On today's episode of In the Know, we'll be exploring the latest updates to the Payment Approval Workflows and QuickBooks Bill Pay. Now, you can more easily and effectively approve payments.
Hey ProAdvisors; It's Jaclyn, and you're watching In The Know, where you get exclusive access to demos of Intuit product enhancements by the leaders who built them. Let's jump right in with Priyanjolie for Payment Approval Workflows and QuickBooks Bill Pay.
Priyanjolie, welcome.
Priyanjolie Roy: Hey Jaclyn, it is so nice to be here. I'm really excited to come here today and share with you a little bit about this amazing new feature that QuickBooks Bill Pay just launched. In fact, this is hot off the presses because it just launched this week. So today it's available to customers, as well as to our ProAdvisor friends.
We heard from ProAdvisors, and we have built this feature based on everything they asked us to do.
Why is this so important? Because this feature is now going to be giving your firm protection. It's going to reduce the risk and liability when you are doing bill payments on behalf of your clients. It is also going to be safeguarding funds, as well as cash flow, for your clients, because now only authorized users will be able to release the payments. And then finally, it is highly customizable.
And now for the Fast Facts:
- Who is this for? This is for businesses that are on Bill Pay Elite or QuickBooks Online Advanced. It also has to be a Primary or Company Admin who can set up this workflow.
- How do they set it up? They go into workflow automation and create the approval workflow. And then they finally save and turn it on.
- When is this going live? It is already live. This week we launched it.
- And then where? This is live in the US only.
Let me show you what this feature is and does.
Adam is a Company Admin and is looking to set up payments release approvals for his clients.
So he just goes into the workflows tab and sets up a new template. How this works is extremely customizable. So Adam goes in and he specifies who the approver is and what conditions are to be met in order for this to be triggered. So this can be completely customized based on vendors, bill payment amount, and a number of other things. And then finally, he can also customize how the approver gets notified that they need to go do something. He can select between either a task in QuickBooks or an email for those who don't want to be notified in QuickBooks.
Once it is all built out and set up, it's as easy as just clicking on the green button, saving it, and turning it on.
So now we come down to we have an approval workflow. Let's talk about what happens on the other side of the house.
So we have Jonathan. He is an employee of the firm. He is doing bill payments on behalf of the client, and so he goes into the client's books. There are a couple of bills that are unpaid. He selects a few of them and decides to schedule payments.
Great. He clicks the schedule payment button, and because we have this approval workflow, he cannot just go and release payments. He sets it all up, so he selects the date that the money needs to be withdrawn from the account, all the information about how much, when, and everything else. However, he still needs to get approval before the money actually leaves the account.
So what you see up on top—it exactly explains that an approver needs to approve before the money moves. So he sets it all up, reviews it, and then submits it for approval.
So the hard part is done. Now let's look at the Approval Process.
So Adam, who is an Admin, gets a notification that there are some bills that are due for approval. He gets an email. Let's suppose he had selected email at the start. He clicks on it, and then he can clearly see what these bills are that he has to go approve. He can go individually, one by one, or select multiple bills. If he knows everything is set up and doesn't need to know too much of the details, he can select them all and click Approve.
Now, if he doesn't want to approve certain bills, that, too, is possible. He can actually reject a bill, as well as leave a detailed note as to why he has rejected it.
I think this is extremely important, because sometimes it might be just a small little error or a delay. The very fact that you're able to list the reason makes this all the more powerful.
And so Adam selects the bills he wants to approve. He clicks approve, and that's about it. It's a simple process.
Now let's assume we just spoke about how he can reject a bill.
Let's quickly chat about if Adam hasn't checked his email or logged into QuickBooks, and these bills are pending approval. What does Jonathan do?
First, Jonathan can go into the Bills, and under the unpaid bills, he can actually see the status. Is it still pending? Is it gone through? Of course, Jonathan is the one tracking these payments on a regular basis, so he's really invested in getting this done and off his plate.
So he sees this. Oh, no, something is pending approval. What do you do? He can go in and click on the link. It copies it, and now Jonathan can send a Slack to Adam or Teams, or whatever messaging platform the firm uses, and inform them, “Hey, this is pending for approval. Here's a quick link. Get it done.”
We're adding ways for entry, and it's not just through email or within QuickBooks. You need to get a decision made and done faster, and we're helping provide you tools to communicate in your preferred way of communication.
Thanks, Jaclyn. That was a brief overview of the Payments Release Approval Workflow, and I am extremely excited for our ProAdvisors to start trying this on their own.
I specifically want to call out that we have heard from ProAdvisors that even for firms where they are doing bill payments on behalf of their clients, there is a preference to have the client press that last button, or have the client do that final sign off before the money is moving. This feature is going to help them.
In addition, if ProAdvisors go into the Workflows tab, they can actually download the audit trails, so they can clearly see who was the person who actually approved.
Now, I know audit trails is something that excites our ProAdvisors a lot, and I want to say that this feature is a step toward maintaining checks and balances, which our ProAdvisor friends like to do for their clients.
So I'm extremely excited about this feature, and I hope you all are too.
Jaclyn Anku: Thank you so much for that demo, and thank you for watching. If you find this update interesting or helpful, go ahead and like, comment, and subscribe. That's all we have for now.
For more product updates and demos, check out our In the Know Hub, and we'll catch you next time.
