Managing vendor invoices manually often leads to payment delays, duplicate entries, errors, and compliance risks. The Invoice Approval Workflow, built using Microsoft Power Automate and SharePoint, streamlines how invoices are submitted, verified, and approved. This automated process ensures accuracy, timely payments, and complete transparency between finance, procurement, and operations teams. It helps organizations maintain financial discipline, reduce processing time, and ensure stronger vendor relationships through faster, systematic approvals.
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Approval Workflow Features
Customizable Approval
Automated Notifications
Audit Trail and Reporting
Approval Decision Options
Query Handling
Add Additional Approvers
Automate Your Vendor Invoice Approval Process
The Invoice Approval Workflow digitizes the end-to-end invoice lifecycle—from invoice submission and data validation to approval routing and payment readiness. Using SharePoint and Power Automate, it eliminates manual paperwork, minimizes delays, ensures compliance with financial policies, and offers real-time visibility into pending and approved invoices.
AscenWork’s Invoice Approval Workflow powered by Microsoft Power Automate and SharePoint.
1. Digital Invoice Submission Form
Vendors or internal teams can submit invoices through a SharePoint-based form that captures invoice number, vendor details, amount, PO reference, tax values, and attachments. The structured form prevents missing data, ensures accurate submissions, and stores invoices in a centralized repository. With Power Automate integration, the workflow initiates automatically, reducing manual handling, speeding up validation, and improving transparency across the finance team.
2. Automated Multi-Level Approval
The workflow routes invoices through predefined approval hierarchies based on department, vendor category, invoice amount, or purchase order details. Power Automate ensures timely processing with escalation alerts for overdue approvals. This structured routing improves accountability, minimizes processing delays, and ensures compliance with procurement and finance policies during every stage of invoice review.
3. Invoice Verification and Policy Checks
The system validates invoice data by checking vendor details, tax calculations, PO matching, and expense category compliance. Any discrepancies or policy violations are flagged for review before approval. This automated verification reduces errors, prevents duplicate or fraudulent invoices, and maintains consistency with financial and procurement standards.
4. Notifications and Alerts
Integrated notifications through Outlook and Teams keep all stakeholders updated. Finance, managers, and procurement teams receive alerts for new invoices, approvals, rejections, or requested clarifications. Automated reminders reduce manual follow-ups and ensure faster processing, improving overall efficiency in accounts payable operations.
5. Role-Based Access Control
SharePoint’s permission-based security ensures sensitive financial data is only accessible to authorized users. Vendors see only their submitted invoices, managers review invoices related to their departments, and finance teams access full audit and payment information. This access model protects financial data and supports internal governance.
Join leading finance and procurement teams using our workflow automation to eliminate bottlenecks and gain full control over spending.
6. Invoice Analytics and Reporting
Power BI dashboards provide clear insights into invoice aging, approval timelines, spending trends, vendor performance, and department-wise expenses. These analytics help finance teams identify bottlenecks, forecast budgets, and streamline accounts payable processes using real-time data. Management can track patterns and improve decision-making through visual insights.
7. Audit Trail and Compliance Reporting
Every invoice submission, edit, approval, or rejection is automatically logged in a detailed audit history. Exportable reports support finance audits, compliance checks, tax filings, and internal reviews. This ensures transparency, strengthens governance, and simplifies documentation for financial audits.
8. Mobile Accessibility
Employees and managers can review, approve, or reject invoices using mobile devices. The mobile-responsive interface supports remote teams and ensures continuous workflow movement, even when approvers are traveling or working off-site. This flexibility helps eliminate processing delays and supports timely vendor payments.
Our consultants bring years of experience in automating purchase order and expense approval workflows across industries. We design solutions that fit your organization’s finance structure, ensuring faster approvals, accurate tracking, and full compliance with company policies.
Every business has a unique approval process. We build custom PO approval workflows that align with your departments, budgets, and hierarchy. From single-step to multi-level approval systems, our team ensures your workflow runs exactly the way you need.
Integrate your purchase order approval software directly with SharePoint, Power Automate, Teams, and Outlook. This lets finance teams manage everything from one place — automate repetitive steps, send reminders, and access audit data instantly within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Whether you manage a small finance team or a global enterprise, our solution scales effortlessly. We’ve implemented workflow automation software for organizations across multiple regions, ensuring consistent performance, data security, and accessibility from anywhere.
Our job doesn’t end at deployment. We provide continuous workflow monitoring, support, and optimization to ensure your PO approval process remains efficient. From new approval rules to user training, AscenWork is your long-term workflow automation partner.
AscenWork has built world class products on Microsoft 365
Have a question? check these answers.
Approval workflow software automates the process of reviewing and approving business requests — such as purchase orders, expense claims, or HR forms — ensuring transparency, accuracy, and faster decision-making.
Approval workflow routes requests automatically through predefined approval levels. Each approver gets instant notifications via email or Teams, and all actions are tracked within the system for full visibility.
Absolutely. Our approval software integrates natively with SharePoint, Power Automate, Outlook, and Teams, allowing your users to work within familiar Microsoft 365 apps.
Yes, administrators can modify the approver list anytime without interrupting existing workflows, making it flexible for organizational changes.
Your data is securely hosted on Microsoft’s trusted cloud infrastructure, with role-based permissions, encryption, and detailed audit trails ensuring full compliance and protection.
We offer prebuilt approval templates for common processes like purchase orders and HR requests, which can be customized further as per your business requirements.
Yes. The system sends automatic notifications to approvers and reminders for pending requests, ensuring no approval gets missed or delayed.
Implementation typically takes 2–4 weeks, depending on the complexity of your existing processes and integration requirements.
Finance, HR, Legal, Procurement, Manufacturing, and IT teams benefit the most — any process requiring sign-offs or compliance checks can be automated.
We offer both. AscenWork specializes in custom workflow development using SharePoint, Power Automate, and Power Apps to match your exact needs.
Yes. You can view detailed audit logs, approval histories, and performance analytics to ensure transparency and compliance during internal or external audits.
Yes, we provide video training, live workshops, and documentation so your team can confidently use the approval system from day one.
Yes. You can easily configure multi-level approvals, set conditions like amount limits, and define department-based approvers using our customizable workflow builder.
You can automate purchase orders, expense approvals, HR requests, vendor onboarding, document reviews, and more — all using the same platform.
Yes. Every request can be tracked in real time through your dashboard. Users can view who has approved, who’s pending, and the overall progress instantly.
Yes. Our workflows can be deployed both on Microsoft SharePoint Online or On-Premises, depending on your company’s IT policies and infrastructure.
Yes, we develop custom Power BI dashboards that visualize approval performance, pending requests, turnaround times, and departmental insights.
Because we combine Microsoft 365 expertise, custom development, and long-term support, ensuring you get a secure, scalable, and business-ready workflow solution tailored to your organization.
Yes. Our approval workflow software supports multi-department setups, allowing each department to have its own approval rules and processes.
Yes, we offer ongoing support, user training, and workflow optimization after deployment to ensure long-term success and user adoption.