LIVE Flowtly update: Faster, sortable lists across people, counterparties and settings (2026-06-28)

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Invoices
19/06/2026 3 minutes Flowtly Editorial Team
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Invoice approval workflow

Flowtly lets you route incoming supplier invoices through an approval step before they are paid. When approval is enabled, invoices wait in a pending list until an authorized person approves or rejects them. You can also skip approval and go straight to the Unpaid tab to select invoices and export a SEPA bank-transfer file for your bank.

Enabling the approval workflow

  1. Open the user context menu (your avatar, top-right corner) and go to Organization settings.
  2. Find the Invoices or Finance section and toggle Invoice approval workflow on.
  3. Configure who may approve invoices. If no approvers have been set up yet, the pending-approval page will prompt you to add them. Approvers are assigned directly on that page via a dialog; they receive the invoices-manager role.

Note: The Unpaid tab is always visible regardless of whether the approval workflow is enabled or not.

The approval tabs

Once the workflow is enabled, the supplier-invoices screen shows four tabs:

Tab What it contains
Awaiting Invoices waiting for a decision. Approvers can approve or reject from here.
Approved Invoices that have been approved and are ready to pay.
Rejected Invoices that were rejected. You can review the reason and re-submit if needed.
Unpaid All invoices that have not yet been paid, regardless of approval status. Visible even when approval is off.

Approving or rejecting an invoice

  1. Go to Invoices in the main menu and open the Awaiting tab.
  2. Click an invoice to open its detail view, or use the action buttons directly in the list.
  3. Choose Approve or Reject.
    • If you reject an invoice, you can add a note explaining why.
  4. The invoice moves to the Approved or Rejected tab immediately.

Note: Only users assigned as approvers on the pending-approval page can approve or reject invoices.

The Unpaid tab

The Unpaid tab collects every invoice that still needs to be paid — approved ones as well as any that bypassed the workflow. Use it as your payment queue.

Key features:

  • Multi-select — tick the checkboxes next to the invoices you want to pay.
  • Bulk export — once you have selected one or more invoices, the Export SEPA file button becomes active.

Exporting a SEPA bank-transfer file

Instead of entering each wire manually in your bank's portal, Flowtly can generate a standard pain.001 (pain.001.001.03) XML file that you upload directly to your bank.

  1. Open the Unpaid tab.
  2. Select the invoices you want to pay using the checkboxes.
  3. Click Export SEPA file (or similar label in the toolbar).
  4. Flowtly generates a pain.001 file and downloads it to your computer.
  5. Log in to your bank's online portal and upload the file using the bulk-payment or SEPA credit-transfer import feature.

Note: Make sure each supplier invoice has a valid IBAN and BIC set on the counterparty's bank account in Flowtly. Invoices with missing bank details cannot be included in the pain.001 export.

Example use cases

  • A finance manager reviews all new supplier invoices each morning in the Awaiting tab, approves valid ones, and rejects duplicates with a note.
  • At the end of the week, an accountant opens the Unpaid tab, selects all approved invoices, exports a pain.001 file, and uploads it to the company's bank — paying dozens of suppliers in one step.
  • A small team with approval disabled uses the Unpaid tab purely as a payment queue, exporting SEPA files without any approval step.

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