Invoice approval workflows enable budget management and oversight by allowing designated individuals to approve invoices before payment.

In this article:

There will often be times when invoice approval is required to ensure work accuracy and completion by the right people in the law firm. These crucial checkpoints are known as approval phases.

Approval phases can be chained together to form approval workflows, where different individuals are assigned to approve the invoice at each phase. Approval workflows are then applied to invoices to control the invoice's progression.

When an invoice goes through an approval workflow, it progresses through each approval phase sequentially. Once all phases are completed, the invoice is forwarded to the Finance team for payment.

1. If you're a LawVu Administrator, go to Settings > Approval workflows.

2. Customize your workflow:

You can also assign approval workflows to teams. To create a team, navigate to the Teams tab. Once formed, you can assign the team to any approval workflows you've set up.

We recommend locking phases that must always apply. Once locked, the phase cannot be edited by users.

Optionally, you can set up conditions for when you want your approval to apply. For detailed instructions, refer to the section Set up conditional rules for your workflows below in this article.

3. Apply the workflow to one or several matter types by clicking Assign workflow and then selecting the matter types to which you want the workflow applied.

If you need to reuse a workflow, you can quickly duplicate it from the ellipses menu:

Conditional approval workflows enable you to create and assign workflows based on more than just approvers and phases. These workflows can be tailored to specific scenarios, such as when invoices are over a certain amount or when third-party invoices require a different approval processes.

Setting up conditional rules for your workflows is a three-step process: first, define the primary condition and determine who will approve invoices when the condition is met ("Yes") and when it is not met ("No").

Click on the flag icon next to the phase, and select a condition from the list of available fields:

The LawVu fields that can be used for conditional logic are:

Choose what happens when the condition is not found (e.g., when the field is removed from a matter type, the field library or is left blank). You can choose to skip to the next phase of the workflow or send the invoices to one or more allocated approvers:

3. Click on the "+" sign next to "No" to create a workflow for cases where the primary condition is not met.

Watch this animation to see how I configured varying approvers based on whether the fee value exceeds a specific amount:

When an invoice requiring approval has been posted, the approver will receive an email and an in-app notification.

If the approver declines the invoice, they can provide a reason, and a notification is sent to the legal service provider.

Once a workflow is applied, it needs to be approved or declined. It can’t be voided or restarted.

You can track the status and history of your sent invoices for approval by using the Invoice details pane located on the right-hand side of the invoice.

This helps you easily see if there are people who still need to approve the invoice or if it's already been approved or declined.