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Use the approval and posting process

In Practice CS, you have the option to control whether work-in-process, billings, and receipts are immediately recorded and show up in the reports and dashboards, or if these items must first be approved and posted by a staff member with the authority to do so.
The decision whether to enable the approval and posting process for one or more of those areas is a decision that you should make based on your individual circumstances and needs.
The theory behind the approval and posting option is that there are circumstances where someone should review what has been entered before those items are posted into the financial records in the database. And further, once an item has been approved, subsequent edits or changes to that item should be controlled.
For example:
  • You might have a billing clerk-entering billing amounts for each partner's clients, but the partner wants a chance to review and approve the invoices before they are posted.
  • You might have a single person who is in charge of the entire billing process, so approval by a different staff member isn't important. But, they want the chance to review all billing amounts before they get posted into the client's totals, and an invoice is printed.
  • You might have each staff member entering their own timesheet (WIP) entries, but want a manager to have a chance to review and approve each timesheet after it is keyed and before that WIP is used in the billing process.
  • You might let staff members enter WIP, but don't want the staff to be able to change prior time entries once a manager has reviewed and approved that timesheet.
  • You might need a manager to approve expenses for staff members.

Enabling approval and posting process

  1. Select
    Setup
    , then
    Firm
    .
  2. Select the
    Preferences
     tab.
  3. In the Approval/Posting process section, mark the
    Required for Time & Expense Entry
    ,
    Required for Billing
    , or
    Required for Receipt & Adjustment Entry
     checkboxes.
  4. All previously existing items (that is, WIP transactions, billings, and/or receipts) will automatically be marked as approved and posted when the option is enabled for that area of the application.
  5. You can turn off the posting process for any of these options at any time by clearing the checkbox.

Considerations

  • There is generally more administrative overhead when posting is enabled because someone must approve and post those items.
  • There is more work involved with editing an existing item if posting is enabled, because the item may need to be unposted first.
  • If posting is enabled for Time & Expense Entry (WIP), any timesheets entered won’t appear on reports or become available to be billed until they are approved. This may mean, for example, that WIP might not appear in the system until the end of the week, assuming that staff enter an entire week's timesheet before it is reviewed and posted.
  • If posting is enabled for Billing, it is easier to review the current billing run as you can mark the
    Unposted only
     checkbox in the
    Review
     tab of the
    Billing
     screen. This will automatically filter the list without using other filters, and prior month posted invoices will no longer appear in the display.

Recommendations

While there is no standard (or “correct”) way firms use the approval and posting process, a majority of firms do enable posting for Billing. This is because many firms are used to having to “post billings” from prior systems. And additionally, with bills, if posting is not enabled and there is an error on the
Billing
 screen, the customer is immediately going to be impacted by that error because an invoice can be printed without any review happening. Further, a significant number of firms who let staff members enter their own timesheets use the approval and posting process for Time & Expense Entry (WIP). Finally, it isn't as common for firms to choose to enable posting for Receipt entry. Ultimately the final decision is a choice that must be made for your firm, upon considering your specific needs and balancing that against the additional administrative overhead created by this process.

This article applies to:

  • Product: Practice CS
  • Subject: Billing