Invoice approval: who signs off, and at what amount
Mike Demo, Founder · 17 October 2026
Approving every vendor invoice slows everything down. Approving none lets mistakes through. The answer is a threshold, the right approver, and a short checklist.
Why approve invoices at all
Most invoice problems are ordinary. Billed twice. The wrong rate. More hours than the PO allows. Work that isn't finished yet. Accounts payable can match an invoice to a PO, but only the person who owns the project knows whether the work was actually done.
Set a threshold
Pick a dollar amount. Invoices under it go through on a PO match. Invoices over it wait for a person. Start where the risk is: if most of your spend sits in a few large invoices, set the line just below them.
For example, a team paying 200 vendor invoices a month might set the line at $5,000 and find a person reviews a few dozen of them instead of all 200. Revisit it after a quarter. If approvers wave everything through, the line is too low. If problems slip past, it is too high.
Who should approve
The person accountable for the budget the invoice draws on: the project owner, the plant or facility lead, the department head. Accounts payable checks the paperwork. The owner checks the work. Name a backup for when they are away, because an invoice waiting on someone's vacation is how late fees happen.
What the approver checks
- It matches a PO, and the PO still has room left.
- Quantities and rates match what was agreed.
- The work or delivery happened.
- It isn't a duplicate of something already paid.
- It lands in the right period, so month end comes out right.
Hold or dispute, with a reason
These are two different answers. A hold means not yet: you are waiting on a delivery or a question to the vendor. A dispute means this is wrong. Either one should carry a written reason, so the next person, the vendor and the auditor can see why. A disputed invoice should not count as spent until it is settled, or your budget will look worse than it is.
Keep the record
Who approved, when, at what amount, against which PO. When an auditor or your CFO asks why a payment went out, the answer should already exist.