Lightyear Approval Tray

Approvals Tab

Watch this video on the Approvals tab:




The Approvals Tab is where the approvals process starts.

Lightyear has a 3 panel layout, and we will always refer to them as panel 1, 2 and 3 as below.



Panel 1 shows a list of the bills that are waiting to be approved.
Panel 2 shows the data extracted from the bill, the original email the bill arrived with, plus any notes that have been added to the bill.  You can access these three levels of information via the three sub-tabs at the top of panel 2.
Panel 3 is a preview of the original bill.


Adding notes to a bill

In the same way that you can add notes to paper bills you can add notes to bills in Lightyear.  To add a note, go to the Note sub-tab on panel-3.  Here you will also see notes that other people have added.  Notes cannot be deleted from a bill and will remain on them forever.

Approve, Dispute or Trash the bill?

Your primary job is to move bills on from your intray, generally by either
1 - Approving them
When you approve a bill, it will clear from the Approvals tab and will move to the next tab.  You will still be able to see those tabs, but you may not be able to edit the bills in them.
Please note that if your company is using the Lightyear Inventory function, and you want to send the bill to inventory, then you need to Add to Inventory before approving it. 
2 - Disputing them via the MORE button
When you dispute a bill, it will clear from your intray and will move to the Disputed tab.  You can leave it here until the dispute is resolved, then either RETURN it to the intray or alternatively send the bill to trash.
3 - Trashing them 
Press the bin icon next to the MORE button to trash a bill



Working out if you should approve a bill.

In order to work out whether to approve, dispute or trash a bill, you should look at a combination of things.
Firstly, does the bill look legitimate?   Panel 3is a true representation of the bill as it was received by Lightyear.  It has not been altered by Lightyear in any way. It may have more than one page.  Directly above the image itself is an indicator as to how many pages it contains. Use the arrows to toggle between pages.
Secondly, in Panel 2
  • The Email tab shows you the email that the bill was received from, and the content of the email.  Do you recognize the sender of the bill?
  • The Edit Invoice tab shows you the detail that Lightyear has extracted from the bill, and whether the rows of information it has extracted equates to the total shown on the footer of the bill.
If the detail that Lightyear has extracted does not look correct you can edit it, and then click Save.  If you edit a bill, the fact that you have edited it will be recorded on the bill history.  The bill history can be found under Activity > Activity.

Before approving the bill you should check the data that Lightyear has extracted to make sure you are happy with it.
Note - If your business is using Lightyear price checker, Lightyear will advise you in Panel 2 as to whether the unit price that the supplier has charged you is correct. 
Please note that more data might be viewed by clicking the blue More button under Due Date.


Q - Does the sum total of the rows on the bill equal the footer on the bill?


When the extracted data does not match
             
When the extracted data does match


The totals of the rows DO NOT match the extracted data.       The totals of the rows DO match the extracted data.


In both the examples above, just above the green Save button you will see a set of three figures.  
Subtotal
Tax
Total
These are the figures that will end up in your accounting software.  They are the sum of the rows displayed above.
Left-hand image above
You will notice that in the example on the left, there are two exclamation marks.  These are flagging to you that the Subtotal, Tax and Total are different to the figures that Lightyear has also extracted from the footer of the bill.  In the example above, hovering over the exclamation mark beside Total will display the left-hand message below, and clicking it will make the right-hand window pop up.


Hover on the red exclamation for more info.

      

If you want to ignore the figures that Lightyear has extracted from the footer of the bill, simply click Update.  In the example above, Lightyear will now regard the total of the bill to be $84.81.
You can reconcile the tax differences in the same way...by click the exclamation mark beside Tax.

But, if you want the total of the rows to equal the figures that Lightyear has extracted from the footer of the bill (i.e., the footer of the bill is correct), you should edit the rows until the match the footer of the bill. It may be possible for you to simply correct the mismatch by editing the values in the rows above, or by adding a row, or by trashing a row, but it may also require a combination of all three.
In the right-hand example 2 sets of images above, the exclamation marks have disappeared because an extra row has been added to the bill.

Once you have edited data in this panel you need to click the Save button.

PLEASE NOTE, YOU DO NOT NEED TO RECONCILE/ADJUST WHEN PRESENTED WITH EXCLAMATION MARKS.  WHATEVER FIGURES ARE IN THE THREE BOXES (Subtotal, Tax and Total) WILL BE SENT TO YOUR ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE.


GST issues
A few other things to look out for here - if the Tax box is red, Lightyear has detected that the supplier has charged you GST when in fact they are not registered to do so (this functionality is currently only available in Australia).


PLEASE NOTE, IF THE TAX BOX IS RED (AUSTRALIA ONLY) OR THERE ARE EXCLAMATION MARKS, YOU SHOULD INVESTIGATE WHY BEFORE APPROVING THE BILLS AND EXPORTING THEM TO YOUR ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE.


Duplicate bills
Even though the bill is correct and legitimate you may not wish to approve it if it is a duplicate.
If Lightyear detects the same bill number from the same supplier, it will mark both with a double-red icon in panel-1.
If you see this you need to work out which bill to trash, and which to process.  To do this simply click on the double-red icon. From here you can view each bill and decide which to trash, and which to continue to approve.

More Options

Whilst simply approving a bill will be the normal thing that you do from the intray, we realise that exception handling is as important in order to make the workflow of all bills as painless as possible.  Lightyear groups all of this additional functionality under the MORE button.


Dispute Invoice moves the bill to the disputed tab

Email Supplier will email the address from which the bill was sent from

Email To Me will email you a copy of the bill

Mark as Unread is self-explanatory

Re-Map Invoice sends the bill back to the unknowns tab to be remapped again.  Use this if the data extracted is clearly wrong and always will be.  Before using this function make sure to Add a Note to the bill to state why it needs to be remapped. Please remember that it does not send it to us to be mapped.

Send Bill Task allows you to send the bill to another Lightyear user or external person for their approval

Transfer Bill will transfer the bill to another Lightyear account.


Changing settings for the whole bill

To the top of panel 2 you will see some labels for the bill in question - this is Summary bill information.



Supplier

If, for whatever reason, the supplier the bill is assigned to is incorrect, you can change it here.

GL Codes

Before you can approve a bill you need to assign a GL Code to it.  If you do not know the GL Code, from the drop down list choose ‘Code Not Known”. This will allow you to approve the bill.

In most instances when you are assigning GL Codes the same GL Code will be applied to the entire bill.  But in some instances you may wish to assign different GL Codes across different rows. For more information about Splitting GL Codes see here.

Tracking Categories/Tagging/Categories/Jobs/Classes

Depending on the accountancy software your company uses, and how Lightyear is set-up, you may see another drop-down box under GL Code.  Each Accountancy Software calls this functionality something different but you should recognise the label.

You can split these labels in exactly the same way as you split GL Codes.  Again, see here

You should refer to the one of the Lightyear Administrators within your company for more information on how they want you to assign and use these labels.

Invoice Number - editable

Invoice Date - editable

Due Date - editable

Purchase Order Number - editable

Currency- editable


What you cannot see here are some less commonly used fields.  By click on View More Fields , the following will be presented to you

Delivery Date - editable (please note that if you use inventory this will be date that we tell your inventory system you received the goods replacing the invoice date)

Order Date - editable

Shipping Date - editable






      

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