We've made it easier for you to request, record, and track approvals on invoices — all from within Buildium. In this article, you’ll learn how to:
- Set up approval limits and Resident Center approval access for board members
- Create bills and request approvals to existing bills
- Review bills as a property manager and board member
- Process approved bills
Set up approval limits and Resident Center approval access
Set and configure bill approval settings
To get started, set and configure policies around which bills in your account require approval before they can be paid. Policies can be set at a global level to handle bills across your entire account or you can set overrides at the property level.
First, navigate to Settings, Application settings, and Bill approvals under Business rules.
Set a Global approval policy
On the Approval Settings page, click the Edit button in the Global approval policy section. Here, you can choose between three options to update your current policy:
- No bills require approvals
- Bills greater than a specified amount require approval. If you choose this option, you can also edit the amount entered.
- All bills require approvals
Set Up Property overrides
On the Approval Settings page, select Property Overrides, and click on Add override. Here, you can select from a list of your properties and set a Property bill approval policy. Setting a property override will override the global policy for bills related to that property.
You can choose between three options to update your current property bill approval policy:
- No bills require approvals
- Bills greater than a specified amount require approval. If you choose this option, you can also edit the amount entered.
- All bills require approvals
Learn more about global and property approval policies, and vendor exceptions.
Adjust Resident Center Settings
You can choose to make the Bill approvals page visible to board members in the Resident Center. To adjust these settings, navigate to Communication, Resident Center settings, and click on Bill approvals under the Pages section. Here, you can toggle on or off the setting to enable board members to receive and respond to bill approval requests through the Resident Center.
On this page, you can also choose to make all approval requests visible to each board member with access to the Resident Center or display only approval requests sent to that board member.
You can override the Resident Center settings for each Association by navigating to Associations in the main menu, selecting a property, and in the Summary tab, clicking on Edit next to the Association owner website settings section.
Create bills and add approvals to existing bills
Approvals during bill creation
During bill creation, if the bill total is above the policy limit, you will be prompted to record or request an approval before it can be paid. Learn more about entering bills into Buildium.
Adding approvals already received
For bills that have already been approved, click on Record approval when prompted to Add approval during the bill creation process. Here, you can select the staff or board member who approved the bill, set the date approved, add any optional notes, and submit.
Navigate back to the bill’s page and scroll down to the Approval section to view any recorded approvals.
Requesting approvals
To request approvals, click on Request approval when prompted to Add approval during the bill creation process. Select the staff or board member to whom you’d like to send the approval request and click Submit.
Navigate back to the bill’s page and scroll down to the Approval section to view the approval status.
Add approvals to existing bills
For bills you’ve already entered into Buildium, you can go back to record and request approvals.
Recording approvals
To record approvals for existing bills, navigate to Accounting, Bills, and click on a bill. In the Approval section, click on Record approval when prompted to Add approval. Here, you can select the staff or board member who approved the bill, add approvers, set the date approved, add any optional notes, and save.
Requesting approvals
To request approvals for existing bills, navigate to Accounting, Bills, and click on a bill. In the Approval section, click on Request approval when prompted to Add approval. Select the staff or board member to whom you’d like to send the approval request and click Save.
Navigate back to the bill’s page and scroll down to the Approval section to view the approval status.
Review bills as a property manager and board member
Property manager approval process
Once you’ve requested approvals from a staff member, they will receive an email notifying them of the request.
In the email, they will be prompted to log into their Buildium account where they can view the bill, review the request, either approve or reject the bill, and add a note to provide more context on their decision.
Board member approval process
Once you’ve requested approvals from a board member, they will receive an email notifying them of the request.
In the email, they will be prompted to log into the Resident Center where they can view a list of approval requests by status, review each request, either approve or reject the bill, and add a note to provide more context on their decision.
Process approved bills
You will receive an email notifying you of the approval or rejection by the board member. In the email, you will be prompted to log into your Buildium account to take action.
Update and resend requests for rejected bills
Navigate to Accounting, Bills, and scroll down to the Approval section to view the approval status by staff or board member. For any rejected bills, you can choose to cancel or resend the request depending on the rejection reason provided.
Pay approved bills
Navigate to Accounting, Bills, and scroll down to the Approval section to view the approval status by staff or board member. For any approved bills, you can make a payment from the top of this page. Learn more about paying bills.
