Using Zapier to notify invoice creators once an invoice is approved in ApprovalMax

This article explains how you can ensure that invoice creators are notified once an invoice is approved in ApprovalMax

This scenario looks specifically at sales, but it can also apply for purchases.

You have a client using Xero that needs approval workflows implemented. They have departmental sales teams who raise invoices in Xero. Each sales department has it’s own tracking category that is used on the invoice. These are then approved by a manager before being sent out to the their customers by the sales team.

ApprovalMax is implemented to achieve the following process

1. Sales Invoices are either created in your accounting platform or pushed to it by an external job management system

2. ApprovalMax pulls all Sales Invoices with the status “Awaiting Approval” and initiates the approval process

3. Each Sales Invoice is routed according to the specified workflow settings and business rules

4. Approvers receive approval requests including all the related information, in the Sales Invoice fields and as attachment

5. Approvals are performed via the web or mobile app; in case of rejection, a comment can be provided for the Requester

6. The status of a validated Sales Invoice changes to “Awaiting Payment”.

Due to limitations of the Xero APIs it is not possible to configure ApprovalMax so that it notifies the actual person who created a Bill or Invoice in Xero. In fact, only the one user who was specified in the first step of the workflow will receive notifications.

Notifying the invoice creator using Zapier

Once an invoice has been approved in ApprovalMax, and the sales invoice changes to “Awaiting Payment” in Xero.

A Zap with the trigger “New Sales Invoice in Xero”, with the status set to “Awaiting Payment”, will execute every time an invoice reaches this status for the first time.

Because of the way Xero presents the tracking category options to Zapier, a formatting tool is needed to split the text.

Paths can then be used in order to filter the results and get the notifications to the right place.

Zapier only permits 3 possible paths, but it’s possible to have paths within paths, so if you have more than 3 tracking options you can set the initial filter to apply to both, then filter it further using another path.

Finally the output can be an email from Gmail/Outlook, a message to a Slack channel, plus many more communication options.

Need help with this Zap or got a similar problem? Book in a free 15 minute Zapier consultation.