Streamline your audits with approval automation: how ApprovalMax can help

A delegation of authority policy is built into your workflows

A delegation of authority policy is built into your workflows. It’s good to have a separate document for your delegation of authority, but how do you make sure it’s not just a piece of paper in a file cabinet or an online document saved in a folder? If your clients are still doing approvals on paper, their files will need to be organised and stored so they’re easy to retrieve. Keep in mind that human error can still come back to haunt your client during an audit if they are doing this manually! Alternatively, if your client is using email to grant approvals, during an audit they will need to search through inboxes to find the approval history for all approved documents. This can take up a lot of their time and effort, and result in missing information that’s been deleted.

With ApprovalMax, you can create your delegation of authority policy in an approval workflow, so authorisation rules are followed consistently each time. You can also show auditors quickly and easily how your approval process works based on the authorisation rules you have set up in ApprovalMax.

You can create a simple or complex approval matrix, set up approvals that happen one after the other or at the same time, and add rules based on cost limits, GL codes, and tracking categories.

Automatic audit reports and trails mean less manual work

When a document is approved in ApprovalMax, a report showing all the details of the approval process is automatically created and added to it in Xero. This includes all decisions made, exceptions, comments, and more. If you want more information, you can find a full record of the approval process in ApprovalMax.

Create easier access for auditors

With ApprovalMax, you can invite auditors to view your workflows and audit reports. The auditors will have read-only access, so they can evaluate things safely without the risk of making changes. They can see all reports and requests for your organisation and add comments. To invite an auditor, go to the “Users” page, add a new user and choose the “Auditor” role from the drop-down menu.

Using built-in reporting to extract more information during an audit

ApprovalMax provides comprehensive reporting to help evaluate the compliance of approval processes. Auditors can see how approvals were granted and get a complete picture with searchable reports. You can also get an overview or dive into specific details by downloading reports in Excel. These reports help identify exceptions to the approval process, such as approvals delegated to someone else, requests that were automatically approved, requests that were not finished, and approvals made by administrators instead of the person who was supposed to approve.

Want to show off your approval workflow? Just export it.

Alternatively, you can share information about your approval workflows without inviting auditors to ApprovalMax. Simply open the workflow and press the “Export workflow” button to produce a PDF document with a written description of the flow. For example, if it’s a purchase order workflow, the document will include a list of individuals who are authorised to create purchase orders, the rules for each request maker, and for every stage, a list of those who approve them, with the rules for each approver.