How To Speed Up Invoice Approvals Without Losing Control

The Problem: Too Many Approvals, Too Little Progress

Invoice approvals take far longer than they should.

An invoice that should clear in a day takes a week. Some wait in inboxes for signatures. Others go through multiple reviewers when one would do. The outcome is late payments, annoyed suppliers, and teams wasting time chasing approvals.

According to Ardent Partners’ State of ePayables 2024, the average AP organization takes about 9.2 days to process a single invoice, often because rules are rigid and workflows outdated.

To stay compliant, many organizations keep adding checks. But more steps don’t always mean better control. They just slow the process down. A $500 recurring invoice shouldn’t travel the same path as a $50,000 capital purchase. But most systems treat them the same.

Why Current Systems Hold You Back

Most invoice workflows are hard-coded. They follow set rules such as amount thresholds, cost centers, and approval hierarchies, regardless of context.

This design guarantees compliance but often ignores common sense. The same invoice type from the same supplier, with no policy risk, still follows the full approval chain. The result is unnecessary steps, long waits, and increased frustration.

When people try to speed things up with manual overrides, they create inconsistency. One team might skip a review; another insists on it. That’s how exceptions slip through, leaving auditors and finance leaders uneasy.

These systems enforce discipline but punish efficiency. Procurement and finance spend time managing the process instead of managing outcomes.

The Fix: Workflows That Adjust Automatically

A workflow optimizer, which combines AI and automation, for invoice approvals brings flexibility to the process without giving up control.

Instead of treating every invoice the same, it looks at type, value, and past behavior to decide the fastest safe route.

Here’s what it does behind the scenes:

1. Understands the invoice: Reads key details such as type, category, and amount.
2. Checks past behavior: Reviews how similar invoices were handled and where delays usually occurred.
3. Applies company rules: Uses policy thresholds and delegation limits to decide who needs to review.
4. Removes redundancy: Skips unnecessary steps and sends the invoice to the right approvers only.
5. Learns over time: Updates routes based on outcomes, so the workflow improves with use.

It’s simple really. Apply the rules intelligently, not mechanically.

The Result: Faster Payments, Fewer Headaches

When workflows adapt, approvals move at the pace of the business.

Cycle times get shorter as routine invoices clear in hours instead of days. There are fewer bottlenecks because the system knows when someone’s out, delegates automatically, and skips unnecessary reviews. Compliance stays tight as approval paths still follow policy but in a smarter way. And everyone’s less frustrated because they’re no longer chasing paperwork or waiting on stalled approvals.

Everest Group research shows that organizations using dynamic workflow tools cut invoice approval time by up to 40%, while maintaining full audit visibility.

Faster approval is not riskier: it just means the system knows which steps add value and which don’t.

Why It Matters for Procurement and Finance

Procurement gains credibility by paying suppliers on time and reducing disputes. Finance gets better visibility on liabilities and cash flow.

Compliance doesn’t lose visibility, either. Every approval decision is logged (who approved, who was skipped, and why), and auditors can trace every step to verify it followed company policy.

That transparency is key. Efficiency doesn’t replace control; it proves that control can work smarter.

Balancing Speed and Control

Invoice approvals have stayed slow because the process hasn’t evolved. Layers of protection built for paper workflows now hold digital systems back.

A workflow optimizer fixes that. It reads context, uses past data, and routes approvals in a way that saves time without compromising oversight. It balances speed and control.

The outcome is faster payments, cleaner audits, and fewer internal complaints.

Ready to make invoice approvals faster and easier?

Talk to a GEP expert today.