Submitting a Bill for Approval – Float Help Centre

Only users with the AP Clerk, Bookkeeper or Administrator role can submit a bill payment request. Spenders do not have access to the Bill Pay page and can not submit Bills for approval. Managers can only approve or deny a bill payment request if they are the approver. For more details, see: Bill Pay User Roles.

How to Submit a Bill for Approval:

Log in to your Float account and navigate to the Bill Pay page
Upload a bill to start the 3-step bill creation flow (See: Uploading, Email Forwarding, and Importing Bills to Float)
Complete Step 1 (Recipient & Amount) and Step 2 (Details — this is where you'll choose an Approval Policy if more than one is available; see: Configuring Bill Pay Approval Policies), selecting Continue after each
Complete Step 3 (Categorization), then select "Submit for Approval"

Why can't I submit a bill for approval?

If you select "Submit for Approval" and the bill isn't ready, Float will show an error message specifying exactly what needs to be fixed.

The most common reasons for this:

Duplicate Bill Warning

If a bill with the same invoice number already exists, Float will flag it for review. It is not possible to have multiple bills with the same invoice number, so you can compare the new and existing bills before submitting for approval.

To resolve:

You will need to ensure the draft bill has a unique invoice number that doesn't match any bill that has previously been approved
You can add a suffix like "-1" to the invoice number, ie "INV-1234-1", and you'll be able to select "Submit for Approval" successfully

Finish Bill Pay setup in the Settings to submit your bill for Approval and Payment

If your business hasn't finished configuring Float Bill Pay, you'll be able to create bills, but selecting "Submit for Approval" will show the error message "Finish Bill Pay setup in the Settings to submit your bill for Approval and Payment".