Efficient approvals & budgeting: Best practices for the building and construction industry

Summary

In this engaging webinar by ApprovalMax, hosted by Justin Campbell, key solutions for streamlining approval processes and efficient budgeting in the building and construction industry are discussed. The session, initially meant to be co-hosted by James Lynn, delves into common challenges faced by teams, such as manual approval delays, lack of visibility in project spending, and compliance issues, and demonstrates how ApprovalMax can alleviate these burdens through automated data entry, mobile accessibility, and enhanced approval workflows. The webinar covers practical examples using a fictional company, 'Urban Development Limited,' highlighting features like the ApprovalMax capture, nudge functionalities, and integrating Xero budgets to improve financial oversight and project execution.

Highlights

• Justin Campbell dives into common budget management challenges faced by the Building and Construction industry 📋.
• Learn how ApprovalMax user-role customization can enhance productivity by pruning unnecessary tasks 🔧.
• Discover new features like 'nudge' for encouraging timely approvals and overcoming bottlenecks in workflows 🌟.
• Extracting line-item details from bills using ApprovalMax capture automates data entry to reduce errors ✍️.
• Real-time budget checking against Xero helps prevent overspending and keeps projects financially on track 📊.

Key Takeaways

• ApprovalMax helps streamline approval processes, saving time and reducing manual data entry hassles 🚀.
• Automated workflows improve visibility in budgeting, helping projects stay within finances efficiently 💡.
• The mobile app feature allows on-the-go approvals, making it easier for teams to manage tasks remotely 📱.
• Nudge and deadline functions ensure timely approvals and prevent delays in project execution ⏰.
• Integrating with Xero, ApprovalMax facilitates better budget management by tracking expenses against budgets seamlessly 💼.

Overview

In this comprehensive session hosted by ApprovalMax's solution engineer Justin Campbell, industry professionals are taken through the nuances of managing approval workflows and budgeting efficiently within the building and construction sector. Tackling head on the issues of delays, visibility, and compliance, the webinar is centered around varied real-world scenarios, spotlighting the benefits of adopting automated systems.

The session features the fictional 'Urban Development Limited,' through which Justin skillfully illustrates how approval and budgeting processes can be made seamless. Using ApprovalMax's tailored automation tools—from expedited data capture to flexible nudge reminders—businesses can significantly improve their efficiency and avoid fiscal pitfalls.

Key insights also include how integrating ApprovalMax with established platforms like Xero can elevate budget oversight to new heights. By ensuring team members can approve tasks remotely via mobile apps and manage workflows efficiently, organizations can stay ahead of project timelines while maintaining fiscal responsibility.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Initial Poll The chapter introduces Justin Campbell, a solution engineer at Approval Max, who will be leading the session alone due to his colleague James Lynn losing his voice. Attendees are encouraged to interact through the chat and Q&A section.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Common Challenges in Approval and Budget Management The chapter addresses common challenges in approval and budget management, focusing on issues such as delays in manual approval processes, lack of visibility in project spending, and difficulties in staying within budget.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Fictitious Company Setup The chapter discusses compliance and audit issues related to a fictitious company setup. The participants are encouraged to share their thoughts via chat. A question is raised about creating a budget in ApprovalMax, which is a topic to be covered in this webinar.
• 05:30 - 08:30: Introduction to Key Personas The chapter titled 'Introduction to Key Personas' discusses common challenges faced in project management, such as lack of visibility in project spending, difficulties in controlling costs, and the need for compliance and audit trails.
• 08:30 - 16:00: John's Challenges and Solutions The chapter titled 'John's Challenges and Solutions' discusses the complexities surrounding the approval process in organizational settings. It questions the efficiency of current systems, inquiring if they are fully automated and streamlined. The conversation highlights the usage of tools like huboc or email to bills in Xero for automation. It acknowledges that while some automation is in place, many organizations are still reliant on a mix of emails and spreadsheets for management, indicating room for improvement in operational efficiency.
• 16:00 - 24:00: Sally's Challenges and Solutions This chapter discusses the manual processes some companies still use for their operations. It describes an example where someone has to print and stamp documents manually to process accounts payable. This highlights the persistence of paper-based systems in many organizations, and notes that several companies are considering adopting more formalized processes to update their workflow.
• 24:00 - 32:00: Demonstration of Budget Checking and Purchase Order Process In this chapter, a fictitious company named Urban Development Limited is introduced, based on an amalgamation of various real companies. The chapter sets the stage for discussing budget checking and the purchase order process in a midsize property development company.
• 32:00 - 46:00: Mark's Challenges and Reporting Solutions The chapter titled 'Mark's Challenges and Reporting Solutions' delves into the complexities faced by a company involved in residential and commercial real estate projects. This company handles multiple construction projects at once, necessitating the management of hundreds of invoices, purchase orders, and approval workflows on a monthly basis. The narrative follows three individuals, including John, who plays a crucial role as the accounts payable person. As the story develops, we explore the challenges and solutions these individuals employ in managing their tasks.
• 46:00 - 58:00: Batch Payment Approvals This chapter discusses 'Batch Payment Approvals' by exploring various perspectives within a finance team. It introduces Sally, the project lead, and Mark, the CFO or group finance lead, and examines the roles of different team members. The accounts payable person is responsible for getting payments approved, while the project manager must manage costs and approve expenditures. The chapter offers a multifaceted view of the batch payment approval process.
• 58:00 - 70:00: Questions and Answers The chapter titled 'Questions and Answers' discusses the responsibilities of a finance manager in ensuring the company's reporting is accurate and comprehensive. The manager also oversees the company's cash flow at a higher level. Additionally, it highlights the challenges faced by Urban Development Limited, which currently has manual and time-consuming approval workflows for invoices that require multiple reviews.
• 70:00 - 79:00: Conclusion and Next Steps The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Next Steps' focuses on the challenges stakeholders face in project management. Key issues highlighted include project execution delays due to lack of visibility over expenditures, difficulties in tracking finances, the risk of duplicate entries and overpayments, and the complexity of managing geographically diverse projects. It emphasizes the need for improved systems to avoid these inefficiencies and suggests exploring better tracking and management solutions.

Efficient approvals & budgeting: Best practices for the building and construction industry Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 for my last two years uh my last two years in this role um about that. So my name is Justin Campbell. I'm a solution engineer here at Approval Max. Uh my colleague James Lynn was meant to join me today. It was going to be more conversational but um uh he's lost his voice. So unfortunately he's not here today. Uh, so you you'll just you'll just have me, but you know, feel free to um put things in the chat and uh in the Q&A section section and we can have a
• 00:30 - 01:00 chat throughout. So, let let's um to warm things up, let's start with a bit of a poll. Um uh let let's start with a bit of bit of a poll. So, what is the biggest challenge your team faces with approvals in budget management? So just just some thoughts here. We've got um delays to manual approval processes, lack of visibility in project spend, difficulty staying within budget,
• 01:00 - 01:30 um compliance and and audit issues. So you know, um if you got any thoughts on that, maybe put that in the chat. Uh we've got um uh we uh we okay we've got uh one uh so question is uh can we create a budget in approval max? Uh so that is actually one of the things we're going to cover today. So that's it's good you've come along to the webinar.
• 01:30 - 02:00 Um yeah, so look honestly some of the most common things we come across are um are really the lack of visibility in project spend um the and just um the difficulties just to keep um costs under control. This is one of the biggest things we uh we have and of course just the general need for compliance and audit audit trails as well. All right. So second question is how would you describe your current um
• 02:00 - 02:30 approval process? Is it fully automated and streamline? You know you might already be using say huboc that comes free with zero or you might be using the email to bills function in zero. Um you you might have so you might have some automation but you might be sending a lot of emails back and forth and managing things in spreadsheets as well. Um, so it might be a bit of a mix. There's also um a lot of companies
• 02:30 - 03:00 that are doing things very manually. Um, I spoke with someone in the last couple days who was literally printing things out and stamping them and putting them in a uh in a uh in tray before the accounts payable person. Um, which is not that uncommon at all. So a lot of a lot of people are still doing paperbased systems. And then there's a lot of companies that are still thinking about having a more formal formal process as
• 03:00 - 03:30 well. So today today we are going to use what is actually an amalgamation of the different companies that I've spoken to over the last two years and we've created a fictitional company um Urban Development Limited but the the the actual sort of like stories and examples are drawn from real life. Um, so this company is a midsize property development company specializing in
• 03:30 - 04:00 residential and commercial real estate projects. The company manages multiple construction projects simultaneously dealing with hundreds of invoices, purchase orders, and approval workflows every month. So, we've got um we've got three people who we're going to follow in this demo. We've got um we've got um uh what's his name? I've forgotten his name. Uh we've got John. We've got John who's our accounts payable person. We've
• 04:00 - 04:30 got Sally who's our project lead and we have Mark who who is our CFO or um uh group finance lead. So we're going to look at it from from multiple points of view. from the point of view of the accounts payable person who has to get everything approved and paid. From the um project manager who has to keep costs under control and has to approve things. And we have um we have you know our our
• 04:30 - 05:00 finance manager who's whose role it is to um uh to make sure you know the company's doing all the reporting that that needs to be doing and and is ke looking at things at a at a higher higher level in terms of the company's cash flow and and all of that kind of thing. So, urban development limited h at the moment they have a manual time consuming approval workflows. Uh invoice have to be manually reviewed by multiple
• 05:00 - 05:30 stakeholders. It can lead to delays in project execution. They have a lack of visibility over their spending on their projects. Um uh and it's difficult to track. There's also the risk of entering in duplicates and having overpayments. um and the the difficulty of maning managing multiple projects where um you know the they're geographically diverse and and not
• 05:30 - 06:00 everyone's in the office. Uh often the getting out of laptop computer isn't easy. So needing to be able to do things on the go on a mobile device is very important. So we've got um we're going to deal with all all of that today. So let let's meet our first person. We're going to meet John who's our accounts payable person. So his top three challenges are that he's at the moment he's entering bills in manually into
• 06:00 - 06:30 zero. He's um he spends a lot of time chasing his approvers, chasing Sally and Sally's colleagues, the other project managers um to get things approved. And there's always the risk of deadlines being missed because it takes too long to get things approved and sometimes when supplies are needed or a purchase order needs to be e delivered uh needs to be um um or you know ordered and
• 06:30 - 07:00 received um it's taking too long for that to work through the system resulting um in problems for the business. So let's talk about data entry first of all. So, a big problem that he has, he's got sort of a centralized centralized um way of doing it. So, things are being emailed to him. Um sometimes it's even paper that's coming to him and he's manually entering that into zero. So, it's uh he's got a
• 07:00 - 07:30 difficult time sourcing um documents from other parts of the business. Um and and then also there's a lot of manual data entry. So that's one thing we're going to help John with today. So one way we can help him with on this is through approval max capture. So we have the ability for you to email bills into approval max and we'll do the auto extraction and we can order we can actually extract all the line item
• 07:30 - 08:00 information of a bill for you as well. But we can also set people up with their user account so that they can upload things and send it to John. For example, on the Approval Max mobile app, someone can take a photo of a paper receipt and then that will be sent to John for review. And that's my next point is that we can set up John as a reviewer um having a review step before things get to approval.
• 08:00 - 08:30 And um uh and the other big thing is that chasing approvals. So we have a an ability to set up deadlines when you're doing your when you're doing your approvals. So that way you've got um you can say I I want someone to receive a reminder if they haven't approved something within 24 hours or 2 days, however you want to do it. That's very very important. Another thing we recent,
• 08:30 - 09:00 this is if you're an existing approval max customer, you may not know about may not know about this. We just released a nudge feature. So if um if something if if if something needs to be hurried up, you can actually after 24 hours, you can nudge someone to approve it as well. So the combination of having those deadlines and the nudges is is very is very important. Um all right. So, before
• 09:00 - 09:30 we go into Sally, I'll just jump into Approval Max and um I'll just jump into Approval Max and show you some of those things that we we just went through. There we go. All right. So, when I jump into Approval Max, um so the fir the first thing I talked about before was the ability to automate your data entry. So, when you're setting up your approval workflows in in um in
• 09:30 - 10:00 approval max, you've got several ways of getting a bill into approval max. One way is you can just enter it into zero and put it to a waiting approval. Another way is you can we can come in here and set Sally up as a requesttor. So, we can set Sally up with the ability so she could do it either from a computer, on a mobile device, and we could even limit her to her particular projects as well. And we um uh and we
• 10:00 - 10:30 and we can also limit her to um the account codes that we want her to be able to select from as well. So, we can do all kinds of things to make Sally's job easier. Um that that's one way of doing it. Another way is that every approval max file can h has a unique email address and you can email things into approval max and we'll do the auto auto extraction. We'll get all the line item information and everything. Um and then
• 10:30 - 11:00 we'll send it to this review step here. So you can see you can see here that um that it's going to that's meant to go to John actually. So it's meant to go from so it goes from however it's entered to John for review. John can check that the tracking categories you know it's assigned to the right project. It's got the right account codes um uh every um everywhere in there and um and then he
• 11:00 - 11:30 can send it to approval. So it would go from John to Sally and then and then if it's potentially you know certain criteria like for example we could come in here and um let let's say Mark the the um fin head of finance anything over 10 oh anything over um 10,000 he needs to approve. So let's put
• 11:30 - 12:00 that in and done. So, and the we had a question in the chat about the deadlines. So, the the deadlines, it's just this little clock here. So, you put in the clock and you can do it either based on the submission or the approval. So, um basically submission is when it was submitted and then the the approval is based on how after its last approval. So, for example, under Mark, we give him a deadline.
• 12:00 - 12:30 he's got two days after it's been approved by Sally to to get the approval done before he starts getting a reminder. And then let's say um he still hasn't done it or you need it done early. That's where the nudge the nudge functionality comes in. So I don't actually have a nudge ready demo here, but if I go back to my slides, it just looks like this. when you've got when you've got um you go to an approval and
• 12:30 - 13:00 you can uh if it's over 24 hours you can click on that and nudge nudge the approvalers in that step. Um okay so now there there was another question here um uh when you email through the invoice in does it automatically match with the PO created? No. So that that's a different step. We're going to talk about that in a in a second. That's um that that's our build
• 13:00 - 13:30 a purchase order matching. All right. So So let's now jump back to the the slides and talk about Sally. Oh, I'm sorry. Clicked on the wrong button there. All right. So Sally's top three issues are having time to approve bills and purchase orders. And the way we can help with that is by making it super easy. Um, ensuring goods have been received before they before the bill
• 13:30 - 14:00 gets approved and paid and having visibility over budgets. So, let let's talk about each of those. So, we make it really easy to be able to submit purchase orders. Um, and and in effect they kind of function as a purchase request as well because you can set people up with the ability to create a purchase order and then they can go to review and go to approval before they get sent to the supplier. So, you can
• 14:00 - 14:30 create you can either create them on your mobile device or on your desktop. Um and uh and then you can um the another way we make it easy is for approving bills and purchase orders is that we have emails that get sent out. So um so we send your approvers an email and they can either approve or reject from their inbox. So we really appeal to all different kind of users. You've got
• 14:30 - 15:00 the really busy person who's always on their phone and then they can come in and approve or reject on their phone and they can leave comments as well. But then you've got the person who might prefer to work from inside their inbox and that's where you can do the the email approvals. Um, and then there were we had the question about the uh bill to purchase order matching. So, what we're going to do now is we're going to we're going to do an end to end of of creating
• 15:00 - 15:30 a bill and then and then uh well, sorry, creating a purchase order, approving it, and then um and then matching it to the bill. So, let let's do let's do that now. And we'll also do budget checking demo the budget checking functionality when we're doing that. So, we had a question earlier. Can you bring in your budgets from zero? Yes, you can. You can bring in your budget and um and so when you're approving bills or purchase
• 15:30 - 16:00 orders, it will um it will tell you how much you have remaining in that budget against against that account code. And if you've got different budgets for different tracking categories in zero, we can um we can also bring in multiple budgets as well. So, if you've got all your projects set up as different tracking categories and you want to have different budgets for each one, we we can we can do that. Um, we can do that as well. And you can also see the state.
• 16:00 - 16:30 So, so if you've got purchase orders in the pipeline or bills in the pipeline, that will deduct from the budget and you can see what's been approved, what hasn't been approved. And we're going to we're going to demo all that now. All right. So, I'm going to jump into zero and we'll update that. All right. So, first thing we'll do is we'll enter this purchase order. But keep in mind, you can do this on the on the phone as well.
• 16:30 - 17:00 I'll just check the chat. Um, what if the what if it's the same account code but different budgets to that account? Yeah. So, um that that gets determined by tracking category basically. Um you can have multiple budgets. I in my example I only have one budget, but you don't have to do it that way. All right. So, we're going to go and enter in we're going to go and enter in this
• 17:00 - 17:30 um uh this purchase order. So, we'll go Boom FN. We'll do the delivery date and we'll pick some items, some golf balls. And there's a feature in here as well. You can actually bulk update things. So you can go edit selected and you can go to purchases. You can choose your tax code and we'll put it all to project
• 17:30 - 18:00 one and put it to the north region. save. Uh, and I can also tick whether or not not I want this to be sent to the supplier once it's been approved. And if I need to send things to the supplier, for example, maybe they have an order form or something like that, I can attach it here down here. So th this this is for you attaching things to your um attaching things for your records and this is for the supplier down here. All
• 18:00 - 18:30 right. And then you can also choose your branding theme. If you have multiple branding themes and zero, you can do that. So we'll go we'll go submit. All right. And now um with that's come through to me for approval. So it's um so when you're approving something, it comes through in different with all the different line items
• 18:30 - 19:00 um in and so you can see all the details here. And you'll notice I've got the budget. So because I've got an amount in the budget against the purchase account, I can see I have a remaining budget of $931 and this is $49.20. And if I click on this this here, I can see the breakdown of that budget. I can see at the moment I've spent 57 um 57 in bills and I I have um this this
• 19:00 - 19:30 amount remaining. And we can now um and if I also if I've got any questions about something I can use the at@ symbol to mention people um so I can bring them in if I want somebody to have visibility over this particular request. I can click on oh sorry click that's version history. I click on this one here go add and then
• 19:30 - 20:00 put it in um and I can add in other other users in here. And um I if I need to put it on hold, I can put things on a hold here as well. Now, let's say I want to add in another approver on this one. I can do that manually here as well. So, I've got a lot of lot of options. So, I'm going to approve this purchase order and and um this is a two-step
• 20:00 - 20:30 approval process. I'm also acting as the finance manager, so I'll approve that as well. Now once a purchase order's been approved in approval max if you have goods receive notes turned on you can als you you'll see this pop up on it and you can actually update the goods receive note on the mobile app as well. So, you can go into the purchase order and you can go update status and you can go choose fully
• 20:30 - 21:00 received or partially received, but I'm going to choose go fully received. And you can leave a comment and attach files as well. You could even take a photo on the mobile app. So, if you want to actually take a photo of the goods, you could you could do that as well. So, go update. And that's that's now been fully received. And you'll see why that's useful in a second. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to copy I'm going to reload this screen. I'll also show you the um email
• 21:00 - 21:30 notification I received as well. Um so, I so this is what the email notifications look like. They come through like this and I can go approve, reject, all of that. And so back to back to here. Um, all right. So that's that purchase order has now been approved. Now, if I were to open that in
• 21:30 - 22:00 zero, I can I can see that it's been approved and it's been sent. So that approval max tells Zero to approve it and send it. All right. And and now we can go back to uh the purchase order. And what I want to do is copy it to a bill. So I'll go copy to bill. And generally when you're doing purchase orders, I find this is the quickest way to get your bills in is to
• 22:00 - 22:30 just copy the purchase order or bill. And then you just need to upload them the the bill and double check that it is correct. and then also put in the reference number from the bill cuz you won't have that. Um, so we'll go and then we'll enter that bill. We'll go submit for approval. Okay. So that is now on the
• 22:30 - 23:00 review step with me. So, it's in review and at the review step, I can go match with PO. So, you could either decide to have your approvers do the matching or your reviewers do the matching. It's up to you. Match with PO. And what this will do is it'll open up all the purchase orders for that supplier that are still open. It'll bring it bring them up. And and in this case, I only have the one purchase order, but um but
• 23:00 - 23:30 I've got the bill here. And what I can do is I can tick the purchase order and I can go insert 5412. And and so you might have a situation where you've got one big purchase order. This comes up a lot in the construction industry where at the beginning of a project for that supply, they create one big purchase order. Um and then throughout the project, they assign the bills to it. Um, and it's almost like they're using it like a kind
• 23:30 - 24:00 of another level of budgeting. Um, so in the and you can see in this case I have 0 remaining. Um, yeah. So I'll go save and but very importantly notice that you can see when you do your matching you can see the goods received note status. So, you probably want to check the goods received note status before you do the matching and approve the payment of the bill because let's say that was not fully received. What you could do then is close out of
• 24:00 - 24:30 this and then go and put put this on hold um for go and put it on hold um so that way you're um you're waiting until until something's been approved um uh uh that it's been received and everything until until it's um good. All right. Now we'll go submit for approval.
• 24:30 - 25:00 And now we just need to need to approve it. And and again you can see our budget has been updated. And we can see all of that in here. And we'll go approve and approve. Okay. So that that we've now done um we've now created a purchase order, marked the goods as received, matched it to a bill, uh matched it to a
• 25:00 - 25:30 bill. What you can also do is go back to the purchase order and um mark it as build. And we do have a setting that automates this and links it to when you're doing the purchase order matching. Um, so what marking something as build will do will change the status of the purchase order in zero. So at the moment it's improved. It hasn't flowed through yet. But if I reload this in a second
• 25:30 - 26:00 um in the next minute or so, it'll it'll move it from approve to um to build. Um it's effectively the same as clicking this button here. Um all right. Now um what we can do is now jump back to our slides and we will talk about Mark who's our finance manager. So Mark
• 26:00 - 26:30 um had the his top three challenges are visibility on what's um on approval and what's been approved. So he wants that high level of visibility. And um um and then um and then he also wants making accounting. Um he also wants to be able to make changes before approving bills. Uh and then there's he also wants
• 26:30 - 27:00 to be able to approve things in batches. He doesn't want to approve individual bills, but he wants to approve the the payment of the bills in a batch at the end at the end of the job. So, one of the ways we can help Mark is building a request report. Uh, building a request for report. So, I'll jump out now and I'll show you how you do that. So, you can go into uh go into approval max and if you scroll down the screen on the menu here
• 27:00 - 27:30 and you go to request reports, what you can do, we've already put some in here. So you can say bring up like bills that have been approved this month and you can actually come into the report settings and you can actually choose what columns you want to be visible. So there's a whole bunch of different columns that you can make available and um
• 27:30 - 28:00 uh and you can actually rearrange these as well. So you can basically build the report you need and very importantly you can filter them. So if you want to build a report for a specific supplier, a specific project, see how I've got the project here. Um like let's say I just want to do project one. Save. Um I I clicked the wrong project
• 28:00 - 28:30 then. Um, and then you could go save as and save that as a report. But you can also click on this little clock here and schedule and schedule the report. So you can put in the your the email address you want it sent to, how frequently you want it generated and sent and send it through. So that gives Mark um a really high level visibility o
• 28:30 - 29:00 over what's been approved, what hasn't been the different requests. So it's that's a very powerful functionality that you can that you can have. Um the the other thing Mark really wants to do is this was a really common request from our customers that things would go all the way through the different approvals that needed to go to and go to the finance manager and then they'd realize something needs to be fixed in terms of like the accounting
• 29:00 - 29:30 treatment or or the trucking category or something like that. So, what you can do if you're on our um advanced or premium plan, you can go into your approval workflows. And now, when you set up approvals, you can go to um you can go in here and go, for example, Sally, you can choose what fields Sally
• 29:30 - 30:00 is able to edit. So Sally can perhaps go and edit the account code. Go save and then and then what we can do is under Mark we can come in here and we can give him the ability to edit tax projects.
• 30:00 - 30:30 um whole whole bunch of things. So you you've got that flexibility and then and then um we have version histories as well. So if either Sally or Mark does make a change that will be captured that will be captured in the version history. So on a bill uh sorry go update on on a on there we go on a
• 30:30 - 31:00 bill you've got this little icon here and that's where you can see any version changes that get made. All right. Um now we'll jump back into our slides and we'll talk about batch payments. So a really common thing we encounter is that um senior management don't want to have to improve approve individual bills but they do want sign off over payment of bills and that's where your batch payment approvals come in and and so this is a
• 31:00 - 31:30 separate workflow from the bill approval and it's part of our premium plan. So you can go in and you can go and set up batch payment workflows and you can have a step who can create the batch and who can who can do the approving and you can make and you can make different rules for different um uh for different bank accounts or specific rules for paying certain suppliers. You've got a lot of choice
• 31:30 - 32:00 here. Uh and you can also give um your approver the ability to remove lines from the batch. So in other words, they can remove specific bills from the batch um if they don't want to pay a particular bill at that time. So what we'll go and do now, we'll go and create go and create the batch. Okay. Did
• 32:00 - 32:30 I just double checking that you can still see my screen? Okay, that's all good. Um, okay, great. Okay, so we'll pick today. We'll pick the bank account and we'll go add bills and um we'll pick we'll pick the um Oh, thank you for letting me know for
• 32:30 - 33:00 I just it didn't have any indicator that it was sharing my screen. I got I just got nervous for a second then that I've been doing a whole demo not sharing my screen. Um all right, so this is that bill I created before. Actually, let me just go and approve a couple more bills. um uh just just so we've got more than one pill in the batch. So I'll I'll submit this for
• 33:00 - 33:30 approval and we'll we'll approve approve approve approve. Okay, that that's done now. And let let's go and do the batch just so we just so it's better if there's more than one in the batch. It's more real to life. So go payment details. Choose the bank
• 33:30 - 34:00 account. Okay, that that hasn't flowed through yet. I'll just do it with this one. We'll go submit. And so that's all the person creating the request needs to do is pick the bills that they want in it. Uh and it'll just pick the ones that are awaiting approval uh waiting payment and the approver can see the list of bills in here and they can click on the individual bills and look at them in a
• 34:00 - 34:30 side byside view in here. Um, and if and if they got any questions about it, they can leave a comment or they can even say uh they can even remove um they can even remove remove individual bills. So they click on the edit button and remove the bills that they don't want included. Then they hit approve. Now it once it's approved and by the way
• 34:30 - 35:00 when the approved box is grayed out like that that means it's been approved in approval max but we haven't updated it in zero yet but um but one one that only usually takes a couple seconds at at worst like uh maybe 30 seconds. So once it's approved, there's an audit report that gets generated and if you open it in
• 35:00 - 35:30 zero, you can then um export out the batch file, upload it to your bank and send remittance advice. And then the last thing you would do is once you've uploaded the batch, that would then come through on your bank feed and you'd match them. it'd light up green and and you'd match and then the whole thing would be reconciled and you've fully paid fully paid the bills. Um all right, so that's um that is batch
• 35:30 - 36:00 payments. Um all right, now there was a question in the chat. So um let me bring that in so I can see it. Okay. Um can we save upload bank verification document proof bank account somewhere on approval max? Okay. Um uh right. Okay. So um if it so what one one thing we do is
• 36:00 - 36:30 we have a contact approvals functionality where um so if we go in in the approval workflows there's a contact approval and one of the things you can do with this is you can actually when you're creating a new supply you can put in the bank details and as part of that approval process of approving a new contact would be checking that the bank account details are correct, checking
• 36:30 - 37:00 the TFN, checking the um, you know, checking all the um, all of the ABN numbers are correct and and do all of that. So, you wouldn't approve something to be a supplier on the list until it's been approved. Now, for updating updating um, bank details, we don't have an actual workflow for that. Um uh but what you can do is you can build a standalone workflow for bank
• 37:00 - 37:30 details and that could then go through an approval process of updating updating the it won't push it through to zero. So you'd have to go into the contact in zero and manually update it. But at least you've got a documented audit trail that you followed a formal process of um updating updating your bank details and you can attach things to that. So if you you any documents you need to attach you can you
• 37:30 - 38:00 can um you can attach you can attach things and um uh the other thing that we're going to do we which we don't do quite at the moment but we are planning on doing is that if an invoice comes through and it's got new bank account details it'll tell you whether or not the bank account details on the invoice match the bank account details you have on file. So, we don't currently do that, but there are plans to add that to
• 38:00 - 38:30 approval max capture in a future update. Um, so there was a question, can we pull a remittance advice from here and send to a contract? No, you'll need to do that in zero. So you you click on that link open in zero uh and then with the with your batch file and from zero you can click on your send remittance advice um in in here but we don't actually do
• 38:30 - 39:00 that from from approval from approval max as well. Yeah. So um all right so let let's sort of summarize. So, what what we've kind of gone through today is we've looked at um John who's in accounts payable, how we can help him with approval max capture, with the review step, with um uh helping him chase up approvers. We've also talked about how we can help um Sally
• 39:00 - 39:30 with the bill to purchase order matching, the budget checking, having the goods receive note functionality, plus also the mobile functionality of being able to prove things on her mobile device. And then and then we've talked about Mark about his need for visibility and um and and making um and the ability to make little accounting changes right at the end of the approval
• 39:30 - 40:00 process as well as also approving approving batch payments. So yeah, the these are some of the most common things that we um we encounter in the um with the building and construction industry. And just sort of repeating about the purchase orders. One of the most common questions I ask to companies is, are you currently using purchase orders? And then they say, oh maybe a little or no, we're not, but we'd like to. So, by implementing
• 40:00 - 40:30 approval max and making it easy for people to raise a purchase order, um that's a really important cost control that we can help um um help you implement. Okay, we we had another question here. Can you split invoices in approval max or does this need to be done once it's brought into zero? So when you say splitting them um so let let me so they'd come let's say
• 40:30 - 41:00 you're entering in an invoice or you've you've entered in an invoice or let's copy one. So we'll go to one of the approval ones and we'll we'll copy it. Um what you could do what you could do is you can um with the you can clone line item. So
• 41:00 - 41:30 let's say you've got to got to split a line item between your different projects. We'll go clone selected and then um uh and then you could you could easily then just split it that way. Uh but let's say you actually want to turn it into two different invoices. Well, what you could do is you could delete certain line items and then um and then, you know, make a copy of it and then um and then you'd probably just need to put
• 41:30 - 42:00 a note in the comment area explaining why you did that. Um uh why you did that, why you only did a partial. I'm guessing some of in some cases you might have more than one zero file and you want to split an invoice between between two different files. So yeah, you could upload it to both and then um only allocate some of it to one and then and then you just need to put something in the audit trail to explain explain why why you've done that. Um yeah, so that
• 42:00 - 42:30 that's how that's how you you could do it. Um now um then that actually probably goes into into um another related thing of inter antage transactions. So th this could be um okay more the the followup was more about splitting a line entry over multiple projects. Yeah. Yeah. That's really easy to do. You just clone the line and then you just put it split the
• 42:30 - 43:00 amount between the two different projects. it. That's uh yeah, that that's not hard to do at all. Um it's just basically the same as zero. Um except for I think our ability to clone lines is a little bit better than what zero does. Um the um now with the just I I didn't actually include this in the webinar, but um I'll just touch on it now briefly is is you can do approvals for manual journals as well. So if
• 43:00 - 43:30 you've got if you have processes where you're doing a manual journal, you could you could have an approval process for th for those as well. And then you can also do um create easily create the reversal for that journal. And that that might be something that you'd encounter encounter a fair bit as well. Um I probably should have actually included that in the slides. Now, um, last thing to touch on. Um, oh, well, we we were going to put this in the poll, but, um, we we can't now, but
• 43:30 - 44:00 we were going to ask if you're interested in learning more. Maybe just type it in the chat if you're interested in learning more about Approval Max. But either way, we'll um uh we'll reach out and then you can just let us know if you'd like to like to have more of a chat with us and then yeah, we can we can go from there. So, um, I've got questions at the end, but I've kind of been answering your questions throughout. So, we we've kind of I think I've answered them all. Um, I guess just
• 44:00 - 44:30 one last thing. If you're not currently on Approval Max, we do have a 14-day trial. So, you can just go to approvalmax.com and sign up to sign up to that trial there. And um uh and and you can set up multiple of your entities to a trial as well. And you also can try out approval max approval max um capture. So you get
• 44:30 - 45:00 100 documents in uh 100 documents for approval max capture as well. So I think um with um oh okay there's another question. Can you split um you you can split Can you split against two different POS? Yes, absolutely you can. So that's a really common scenario like um uh or there might be a case where the bill comes in
• 45:00 - 45:30 and it's more than what was originally because perhaps costs have gone up or so on. So, a common way of handling that is you actually raise a second PO for the for the overrun and then uh and then you can match a bill to more than one PO. So, it goes both ways. You can match um you can match multiple bills to a single PO, but you can also match um bills um you can match um you can match what you can match u do it the other way
• 45:30 - 46:00 around. Yeah, it goes either way. So, it's very flexible in that way and it's it's probably one of the most um useful features we have that really adds a lot of extra functionality over what you get natively in Zero. Um and and sort of the way people use the builder purchase order matching um often functions almost more as like a almost like a budgeting tool in a lot of cases what I see people do. Uh so yeah,
• 46:00 - 46:30 it's a really powerful way of kind of getting control over what you're spending and um and having really good processes around all of that. Um thank you Jeet. That's very nice of you to say. Um but I I think we're all out of questions so I might wrap up because I think we were scheduled to go for 45 minutes. So, um, we've recorded this, so we can send you the recording and, um, and we'll, um, yeah, we'll, uh,
• 46:30 - 47:00 we'll be in contact if you want to, if you want to hear more. Thank you very much. Have a great day, everyone. Bye.