Invoice approval policy: who signs off what, and when

Invoice approval — in Lithuanian business slang often called vizavimas — is the step where the person responsible confirms that a cost was needed and agreed before the invoice is paid and booked. In a small company it happens on its own: the director sees every invoice and knows who ordered what. As people and departments multiply, invoices start waiting in inboxes, and six months later nobody remembers who approved them or why.

This matters even more when the company is owned or managed from abroad and the books are kept locally. The owner wants to know that every cost went past someone responsible — and to be able to check it without asking.

Approval is not the accountant's check

The accountant checks whether an invoice is correct: company details, VAT, totals, whether the supplier is who it claims to be. What the accountant cannot know is whether the goods arrived, whether the work was done and whether the price is the one that was agreed. Only the person who ordered it knows that. Approval is their answer — not instead of the accountant's check, but next to it.

Five questions an approval policy has to answer

• •Who approves which invoices — by department, project or type of cost?
• •Above which amount is a second signature needed, and are there suppliers that always need one?
• •Who approves when the person responsible is on holiday or ill?
• •How quickly must an invoice be approved so that the payment date is not missed?
• •What happens to an invoice the approver rejects or flags as suspicious?

If the answer to any of these is "it depends", the policy lives only in the director's head. That works while they are in the office. When they are away, the invoices wait.

Who approves: whoever owns the cost

The simplest rule is that the invoice is approved by whoever's budget pays for it. Production materials go to the production manager, office costs to the office manager, project purchases to the project manager. Who does not see an invoice matters as much as who approves it: when each approver sees only their own invoices, nothing gets lost among other people's and nobody approves what they know nothing about.

A finance director or an owner often does not need to approve each invoice but does need to see all of them. That is a separate role — sees everything, approves nothing — and it is worth planning for from the start.

A second signature above a limit, not on everything

Two signatures on every invoice slow everything down and soon turn into a formality: the second person starts approving without looking. It works better where the risk is higher — amounts before VAT above a set limit, and suppliers that deserve a second look, such as new ones or those that have just changed their bank account.

Agree the order in advance too: do the two approve in any order, does the second approve only after the first, or does the second have the final word?

What the approver should check — and what not

• •the goods arrived or the work was done
• •price and quantity match what was agreed
• •it really is a cost of their department or project
• •the same invoice has not already been approved or paid

VAT codes, company details and ledger accounts are the accountant's job. When approvers are expected to handle those as well, approval slows down and errors do not go down.

Where approval usually gets stuck

• •Approval by an "OK" email — the decision exists, but not on the invoice
• •One person approves everything and becomes the bottleneck
• •During holidays nobody knows who stands in
• •The accountant cannot see which invoices are still waiting, or on whom
• •"Part of this amount is disputed" is said over the phone and forgotten

How this works in Ezura

Ezura turns the policy you agree on into rules. Each department has its own approvers, larger amounts or chosen suppliers need a second signature, and the accountant sees which invoices are approved and can hide the rest from their list. Approval works on the phone too, and when an employee submits an invoice the approver gets a notification. Every decision stays in the invoice's history with a name and a time. Approvers can use Ezura in English while the accountant works in Lithuanian.

What is not there yet: a stand-in with dates. For now, a department simply names more than one approver. We set the approval rules up with you during onboarding.

Where to start

Write today's policy down as a simple table: department or project, approver, stand-in, and the amount above which a second signature is needed. Writing it down usually shows where the rules are unclear. The same table can later be moved into a system as it is.

Frequently asked questions

Is invoice approval mandatory? It is an internal control the company sets for itself, usually by a director's order or in its accounting policy.

Will approval slow invoices down on their way to the books? When each approver sees only their own invoices and can approve on the phone, it usually speeds things up: the reminder emails and the "who hasn't approved yet" questions disappear.