# Invoice approval handoff: getting invoices approved without chasing

Invoices stall between whoever receives them and whoever approves them. Who approves, what has to travel (amount, due date, PO) and how to stop chasing.

## The short answer

An invoice approval handoff works when the approver gets everything needed to say yes or no in one message: the supplier, the amount, the due date, the purchase order or budget line, what it is for, the invoice and a clear ask. Send it to one named approver with a date, and track it until approved or returned.

In many teams, a late payment has little to do with money. More often the invoice sat in someone’s inbox, the approver did not know it was theirs, or the request was missing the one detail they needed. Each of those turns into a chase: a reminder, a call, a “did you see my email?”. This article covers who should approve, what has to travel with the invoice, and a routine that makes chasing the exception.

## Where invoices get stuck

Follow a typical invoice. It arrives in a shared inbox. Someone in finance forwards it to the budget owner with “please approve”. The budget owner is travelling, sees it on their phone, cannot tell what it is for, and leaves it for later. The supplier sends a reminder after the due date. Finance chases. The budget owner asks which project it was. Someone digs out the purchase order.

Three gaps cause most of this:

- **Unclear approver.** The invoice goes to a person who is not sure it is theirs to approve.
- **Missing context.** The approver cannot tell from the message what the invoice is for or whether the amount is right.
- **No deadline in the request.** “Please approve” has no date, so it waits behind everything that does.

## Decide who approves before the invoice arrives

The chase often starts because nobody decided who approves what. A simple approval matrix fixes that. Agree it once and keep it where finance can see it.

APPROVAL MATRIX

Spend type        | Up to €2,000     | €2,000–€10,000   | Over €10,000
------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------
Marketing         | Marketing lead   | Marketing lead   | Marketing lead + CFO
IT and software   | IT lead          | IT lead          | IT lead + CFO
Office and admin  | Office manager   | Finance manager  | CFO
Projects          | Project owner    | Project owner    | Project owner + CFO

Backup approver when the approver is away: [name per row]

The backup line is easy to forget, and it matters: an approver on holiday is one of the usual reasons an invoice stalls.

## What has to travel with the invoice

- [ ] Supplier and invoice number.
- [ ] Amount, with VAT shown separately.
- [ ] Due date: the date on the invoice, not “end of month”.
- [ ] Purchase order, budget line or project it belongs to.
- [ ] What it is for, in one line: “Design work for the October campaign”.
- [ ] Anything unusual: a price different from the PO, a duplicate, a late fee.
- [ ] The invoice file itself, attached, plus the PO if there is one.

Add one more line to every request: the ask, with a date. “Please approve by Wed 21 Oct so it goes in Thursday’s payment run.” The approver now knows what, why and by when.

## A worked example

Mark in finance at a made-up company receives an invoice from a design agency. Instead of forwarding the email, he sends this:

INVOICE APPROVAL: Studio Lark, INV-2026-311
To: James (marketing lead)   Approve by: Wed 21 Oct

Amount: €4,800 + VAT
Due date: Fri 30 Oct
PO: PO-1187 (October campaign design), €4,800
For: Design work for the October campaign, final delivery

Unusual: none. Amount matches the PO.

Ask: Approve by Wed 21 Oct for Thursday's payment run,
or tell me what is wrong.

Attached: studio-lark-inv-2026-311.pdf, po-1187.pdf

James can approve it from his phone in ten seconds, because nothing needs looking up.

## A weekly routine instead of chasing

Chasing is what happens when nobody can see which invoices are waiting. A short weekly routine replaces most of it:

1. **Every Monday, list what is waiting.** Each invoice sent for approval and not yet approved, with its approver and due date.
2. **Mark anything past its approve-by date as overdue.** One reminder, with the request attached again so the approver does not have to search.
3. **Escalate after the second miss** to the backup approver in the matrix.
4. **Note what came back and why.** If invoices keep returning for the same reason (missing PO, wrong cost centre), fix it at the source.

## Doing it in one sentence with Colle

If finance works in Claude or ChatGPT, the request can be sent from there. With Colle, Mark says:

> Send James this invoice, pay by Friday.

His assistant finds James, writes the summary, records the facts (the amount, the due date, the PO) and attaches the invoice. James gets a notification straight away with who sent it, what it is and by when. He accepts it, marks it done once approved, or returns it with a reason, such as “wrong cost centre, should be 4100”. If the date passes without an answer, both of them see the handoff as overdue, which replaces step 2 of the routine.

Invoices stay in the case with their description, so “the Studio Lark invoice from October” can be found later by searching. If the amount is corrected, the fact keeps its history.

Colle does not pay invoices and does not replace your accounting or accounts payable software. It carries the approval request from one person’s assistant to another and shows where it stands. See how this works for [finance teams](/use-cases/finance/).

[Join the Colle pilot](https://www.trycolle.com/#pilot)

## When you do not need Colle

If your accounting system already routes invoices to the right approver with reminders, and approvers act on them, keep it. If invoices are few and approvers sit in the same room, a good request email and the routine above are enough. Colle helps when approvals move between people who work in AI assistants and keep slipping between inboxes.

To estimate what chasing costs your team, use the formula in [the real cost of a handoff](/blog/cost-of-a-handoff/). Contracts have the same shape with higher stakes; see [contract review handoff](/blog/contract-review-handoff/). For costs, see [pricing](/pricing/).

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Canonical page: https://www.trycolle.com/blog/invoice-approval-handoff/ · Last updated: 2026-10-18