Approve or decline multiple bills, reimbursements, and other items at once from the Approvals page, instead of opening each one individually, as explained in What are Approvals?.
Before you start
- Bulk approvals are available on the web app only, not on the mobile app.
- You need to be set up as an approver on the relevant approval policy before you can act on an item, individually or in bulk.
- Bulk approvals cover most payment and approval types (bills, reimbursements, card transactions, purchase orders, and budget top-up requests), but not every type. Some items are always excluded from bulk action; see "What can't be bulk approved" below.
How to bulk approve
- Log in to the Weel web app and go to Approvals.
- Select the items you want to approve using the checkboxes in the left column.
- To select everything, use the checkbox at the top of the table. This selects every eligible item across all pages, up to a maximum of 100 items at a time.
-
Click Approve (labelled with the number of items selected, for example "Approve 12 items") in the action bar at the bottom of the screen.
- If any selected reimbursement is missing a payment date, you'll be asked to set one first.
- If any selected item doesn't have enough budget, you can approve everything anyway, or approve only the items with enough budget and skip the rest.
- Confirm the action in the Confirm approval pop-up.
- Each item is processed and approved individually behind the scenes. This can take a few moments for a large batch, and you can track progress without leaving the page.
How to bulk decline
The flow is the same as bulk approve:
- Log in to the Weel web app and go to Approvals.
- Select the items you want to decline using the checkboxes in the left column.
- To select everything, use the checkbox at the top of the table. This selects every eligible item across all pages, up to a maximum of 100 items at a time.
- Click Decline in the action bar at the bottom of the screen.
- Confirm the action in the Decline all payments? pop-up.
- Each item is processed and declined individually behind the scenes.
Bulk decline doesn't currently support adding a comment. If you need to leave a reason for declining, decline that item individually instead. See How to decline or request changes on an approval.
What can't be bulk approved
Some items can't be included in a bulk action. You'll see an alert icon next to these; hover over it to see why. The items that are excluded are:
- Manager-only custom fields (MOCF): Items with an incomplete manager-only custom field need to be reviewed and approved individually.
- International bills: These have additional FX and payment information that require single-item review.
- Invoices from a new or not-yet-approved supplier: When a supplier hasn't been approved yet, the first invoice from them needs individual review to confirm their bank details are correct before payment.
- Bills with a modified BPAY reference number (CRN): If a bill's BPAY CRN doesn't match the one on file for the supplier, it needs individual review as a safeguard against misdirected payments. This only applies to businesses with BPAY enabled.
- Batch payments: These need additional authorisation, so the approver has to open the batch and confirm the total before approving.
- Credit notes: These always need to be reviewed and approved individually and can't be bulk approved.
Items that are still pending someone else's approval, that have already been actioned, or that are flagged as a likely duplicate invoice will also show as ineligible for bulk action, for the same reason they can't be approved individually until that's resolved.
Related articles