No matter how smart, trusted or well-trained your accounting department is, accounting transactions are always prone to blunders. For this, a maker-checker tool adds a second set of eyes that can help detect errors or any suspicious activity while authorizing transactions. Dual approval undoubtedly helps safeguard your company by guarding it against unintentional mistakes and procedural deviations made by your staff. Approval Workflow or the maker-checker tool works as a saviour for companies with multiple departments and larger value transactions.
RealBooks’ Approval Workflow is a fully customizable feature where you can nominate a pool of makers and checkers for specific transactions. The option to use various combinations while setting rules based on users, branch, voucher type, ledger groups, etc, makes RealBooks’ maker-checker tool dynamic.
Also, what sets our maker-checker tool apart is the document attachment feature that RealBooks’ exclusively provides. One can refer to the attached document for approving the transaction which makes authentication quick and easy.
When a transaction is created or updated by a maker, it triggers an email as well as an approval notification on the checker’s dashboard. These specific transactions where approval workflow is applied are marked as unapproved, and can’t be printed unless the checker authorizes them.
What Benefits Does Approval Workflow Provide?
Adding an Approval Workflow can help the management exercise better online control and avoid several operational issues.
- Monitor what the user is doing
Approval workflow helps to track any sort of manipulations while supervising transactions. You are notified in the event of creation as well as updating of transactions, so you can keep an eye on any changes that come forth.
- Reduction of errors
A checker can spot a variety of mistakes, from internal procedure violations to typing errors or omission errors in the transactions.
- No scope for internal fraud
It is possible that even your trusted employees may take a poor ethical decision. Approval workflow mitigates the risk of internal fraud by allowing any misconduct to be identified early in the process. It takes the following preventive measures –
- Entries are locked post-approval, which cannot be edited/unlocked without higher authority approvals
- Invoice/Voucher Print/Money Receipt/Acknowledgment cannot be generated if the entry is unapproved
- Unapproved Bill entries cannot be tagged in Receipt/Payment (that is controlled via Parameter, and is optional)
- Increase in efficiency of operations
When a checker rejects any transaction, they can simply add a comment stating the reason. The maker can then swiftly make the required changes and send the transaction for authorization. This saves the downtime for managers to personally call up the accountant and explain the reason for rejection.
Besides this, accessing reports becomes easy too. Based on the date of approval, the Day Book Report can also be viewed.
- Rule based on AND Operation
The rule setting in RealBooks’ is based on the ‘AND’ operation which helps to add multiple rule types to a specific transaction.
For example, you can set a rule for bill booking for User ‘X’ from branch ABC for ‘M’ ledger group for transaction value greater than 50000.
- Range rule
You can set a range rule for a value greater than a specific amount. This helps to filter out lower value transactions from the approval workflow and only show high-value transactions to the managers.
- Approval Workflow levels
You can even set a hierarchy for authorization of transactions by setting approval levels.
You can also activate whether the maker can update or delete after final approval is done and whether the user can print out a copy before approval.
- Contingency plans
If the assigned checker or the manager isn’t available for authorization, then his/her approvals can be reassigned to someone else with an immediate effect. Post-re-assignment, the approvals triggered will be shown on the new assignee’s dashboard.
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