Finance teams searching for ApprovalMax are usually looking for a specific thing: a way to see what is waiting for approval, who is holding it up, and what the overall state of the AP queue is at any moment. That visibility problem is real, and ApprovalMax addresses part of it well. What it doesn’t address is the layer upstream of approval: whether the invoices in the queue have been validated, matched, and coded correctly before anyone signs off.
What most approval tools miss is that visibility into the approval queue is only useful if the queue contains the right invoices. Invoices that shouldn’t have been created, duplicates that were missed, or invoices with changed supplier bank details all look like normal pending approvals from inside a dashboard. What to evaluate is whether you need approval visibility only, or approval visibility combined with pre-approval controls.
ApprovalMax vs. Pulsify: What Each Actually Does
Capability | ApprovalMax | Pulsify |
|---|---|---|
Multi-level approval routing | Yes, core strength | Yes, with threshold-based routing |
Approval dashboard and visibility | Yes, strong | Yes, integrated into AP workflow |
Threshold-based routing | Yes | Yes |
Invoice capture and extraction | No (requires Dext or similar) | Yes, built-in |
Line-item coding | No | Yes, from supplier history |
Supplier/bank detail validation | No | Yes, flags changes before approval |
Duplicate invoice detection | Limited | Yes, before ledger publication |
PO matching | Limited | Yes, two-way line-level |
Xero integration | Yes | Yes |
MYOB integration | Yes | Yes |
Subscription model | Per-user or per-entity | Usage-based, single platform |
ApprovalMax is purpose-built for approval workflow control and does it well. If your primary problem is approval routing and visibility, ApprovalMax is a strong tool. If the approval step is one part of a broader AP control problem that also includes capture, coding, validation, and matching, a platform that handles all of those stages reduces the integration overhead and context loss that comes from connecting Dext, ApprovalMax, and an accounting platform.
Why Approval Visibility Dashboards Fail in Practice
Approval dashboards exist in every AP tool. Most finance teams don’t use them consistently. The reason is usually one of these:
The data is stale. If the dashboard refreshes every few hours or only when manually updated, it doesn’t reflect the real state of the queue. A finance team that has learned not to trust the dashboard checks email instead.
The dashboard shows status, not context. “Awaiting approval from M. Tran” tells a finance controller where the invoice is. It doesn’t tell them how long it’s been waiting, whether M. Tran is in the office today, or whether the invoice was flagged for an unresolved exception before it was routed. Status without context doesn’t help a controller make decisions.
There are too many columns and not enough filters. A dashboard that shows every invoice in every status across every entity, without the ability to filter by approver, threshold, or ageing, is a table, not a management tool.
A useful approval visibility dashboard shows: what is waiting, who it’s waiting on, how long it’s been waiting, and whether anything in the queue is overdue or approaching a payment terms deadline. That’s four pieces of information. Most AP dashboards show eight times that many columns and require filtering to find anything actionable.
Step-by-Step: Building an Approval Visibility Dashboard That Finance Teams Use
Step 1: Define What Decision the Dashboard Serves
Before building anything, ask: what decision does this dashboard support? The answer should be specific.
”See what’s in the AP queue” is not a decision. It is a description of a view.
”Identify invoices that have been waiting more than 5 business days and take action to unblock them” is a decision. A dashboard built around that decision looks completely different from one built around general visibility.
Common decision-based dashboard purposes for AP approval:
Unblock stalled approvals before payment terms expire
Identify approvers who are consistently the bottleneck
Confirm that all invoices above a threshold have been approved by the right authority level
Flag exceptions that have been sitting unresolved for more than a defined period
Pick one primary purpose. Build the dashboard for that. A single-purpose dashboard is used; a multi-purpose one is ignored.
Step 2: Set Up the Data Layer in Xero or MYOB
A visibility dashboard is only as good as the data feeding it. Before building any reporting view, confirm the data layer is consistent.
In Xero:
All invoices should move through the Awaiting Approval status before approval. If any invoices are being approved directly from Draft, the Awaiting Approval queue is incomplete.
The approval date, approver name, and invoice amount are captured in bill history. This is the data that feeds approval ageing reports.
Xero’s native reporting doesn’t include an approval ageing view. This data must be exported or accessed via a reporting add-on.
In MYOB:
Confirm that the “Approve Bills Before Payment” preference is enabled in all relevant company files.
Bill history in MYOB captures creation, approval, and modification events. This is the source data for any approval visibility reporting.
MYOB’s native reports include a Purchases Journal and a Bills report but not an approval-stage ageing report. Custom reporting requires either the MYOB report builder or data export.
Control checkpoint: Pull a month of bill history from Xero or MYOB. Check what percentage of approved bills have an Awaiting Approval record. If a significant number went from Draft to Approved with no Awaiting Approval step, those approvals bypassed the workflow.
Step 3: Configure ApprovalMax for Approval Visibility
If you are using ApprovalMax, the approval dashboard is one of its strongest features. To configure it for practical use:
Set up approval steps with named approvers:
In ApprovalMax, create an approval workflow for the bill type (purchase invoice or bill).
Define the approval steps: who approves first, who approves second if required, and what the threshold conditions are.
Assign named approvers to each step. Generic “any approver” steps reduce visibility because the dashboard can’t show who specifically is holding an item.
Configure the dashboard view:
4. In the ApprovalMax dashboard, set the default view to “My Organisation” to see all pending approvals across the entity.
5. Add the “Waiting Days” column to identify stalled approvals.
6. Sort by waiting time, descending. Items waiting longest appear at the top.
7. Set up email reminders in ApprovalMax: approvers can be auto-notified when an item has been waiting more than a defined number of days.
Control checkpoint: After configuration, run a test invoice through the full workflow. Confirm the dashboard shows the item in the correct step, with the correct approver assigned, and that the waiting time counter starts from submission, not creation.
Step 4: Set Up Escalation and Substitute Approver Rules
A dashboard that shows stalled approvals is useful. An automation that escalates them is better.
In ApprovalMax, escalation rules can be configured to route an approval to a substitute if the primary approver hasn’t acted within a defined period. This turns the visibility insight (this is stalled) into an automated action (route it to the delegate).
To set this up in ApprovalMax:
In the workflow settings, go to the escalation options for each approval step.
Define the escalation period (e.g., 2 business days with no action).
Assign the escalation approver (typically the financial controller or CFO).
Confirm that escalation is logged in the audit trail, not just actioned silently.
Without escalation, the dashboard tells you something is wrong but doesn’t fix it. The finance team still has to chase the approver manually, which is the problem the dashboard was supposed to solve.
Step 5: Build the Ageing Report
Most approval dashboards show current status. The more useful view for a financial controller is approval ageing: how long have invoices been sitting at each stage, and how does that compare to payment terms?
A practical approach using Xero and a reporting add-on (Syft, Fathom, or similar):
Export the Awaiting Approval bill list including creation date and due date.
Calculate “days in queue” as today’s date minus creation date.
Flag any invoice where “days in queue” exceeds the payment terms minus a 5-day processing buffer.
Group by approver to show which approvers consistently hold items longer.
A financial controller at a hospitality group in Perth used this simple export-and-flag approach to identify that one approver was consistently delaying approvals by 8-10 days. The invoices affected were mostly from food service suppliers with 14-day payment terms. The delay wasn’t deliberate: the approver was approving from a mobile device and hadn’t enabled notifications. A configuration change in ApprovalMax resolved it. The dashboard made the problem visible; the data made the fix obvious.
Step 6: Define the Weekly Review Process
A visibility dashboard is a passive tool unless someone reviews it actively. Build a weekly AP review into the finance team’s schedule:
Review all invoices that have been in the approval queue for more than 3 business days
Confirm that all invoices above the threshold have been approved by the correct authority level
Identify any exceptions that have been sitting unresolved and escalate or close them
Note the total value of invoices awaiting approval against the upcoming payment run
This review takes 15-20 minutes for most SMB finance teams. It prevents the accumulation of stalled approvals that create end-of-month payment problems and disrupts the supplier relationships that depend on timely payment.
Step 7: Integrate Pre-Approval Controls With the Dashboard
An approval dashboard shows the state of what’s in the queue. It doesn’t show what should have been flagged before the queue. To make the dashboard genuinely useful as a control tool, the pre-approval layer needs to feed into it.
If an invoice has been flagged for a supplier bank detail change, that flag should be visible in the approval dashboard alongside the invoice. If an invoice is a potential duplicate, the approver should see that flag when they open it for review, not discover it in a reconciliation three weeks later.
Exception flagging should occur before an invoice reaches the approval queue. Pulsify’s validation and exception review layer surfaces these issues as colour-coded signals, so the approver seeing an invoice in the dashboard knows whether it arrived clean or with unresolved questions. That context changes the approval decision: an approver looking at a flagged bank detail change should not approve for payment until the flag is resolved, regardless of whether the invoice amount and coding look correct.
This is the gap ApprovalMax doesn’t close on its own. It shows the approval state. It doesn’t show the validation state of the invoice before it entered the workflow. For construction, wholesale, and healthcare businesses where the fraud risk is highest, that distinction matters.
Checklist: Approval Visibility Dashboard That Works
Dashboard built around a specific decision, not general visibility
All invoices passing through the Awaiting Approval step (no Direct Draft-to-Approval bypasses)
Named approvers assigned at each step (not “any approver” groups)
Waiting time visible as a column, sorted by longest first
Escalation rules configured with named escalation approvers
Escalation events logged in the audit trail
Weekly review process defined and scheduled
Ageing report showing days in queue against payment terms
Pre-approval exception flags visible alongside invoices in the dashboard
Approver notification settings tested and confirmed working
Questions to Ask Before Committing to an Approval Visibility Tool
Can the dashboard show how long each invoice has been waiting, by approver?
When an invoice is escalated, is the escalation event recorded in the audit trail?
Does the dashboard surface pre-approval exceptions (duplicate flags, supplier validation issues) alongside the approval status?
Can I filter the dashboard by entity, approver, invoice amount, and ageing simultaneously?
If an approver approves an invoice outside their delegation limit, does the system record that or allow it silently?
How does the dashboard handle invoices that were approved but later reversed?
Does the approval tool integrate directly with MYOB approvals or Xero, or does data need to be manually synced?
Who This Fits and Who It Doesn’t
Business profile | Recommendation |
|---|---|
Single approver, under 20 invoices/week | Xero or MYOB native approval status is sufficient; no dedicated dashboard needed |
Multiple approvers, growing invoice volume | ApprovalMax or equivalent approval tool with dashboard and escalation rules |
Construction or wholesale with high fraud exposure | Approval tool plus pre-approval validation layer; dashboard alone is insufficient |
Accountant managing multiple client entities | Multi-entity approval platform with per-client approval visibility |
Business with frequent approver absence or delegation needs | Escalation rules and delegate configuration are essential, not optional |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does ApprovalMax do and how does it compare to other approval tools?
ApprovalMax is an approval workflow platform that integrates with Xero and MYOB. It handles multi-level approval routing, threshold-based conditions, and approval dashboards. It is purpose-built for financial controls and does those well. It does not handle invoice capture, line-item coding, supplier validation, or PO matching natively. Businesses that need those capabilities typically pair ApprovalMax with Dext for capture, creating a two-tool stack. Platforms like Pulsify handle extraction, coding, validation, and approval workflows in a single system, which removes the integration gap between tools.
How do I create an approval workflow in ApprovalMax for Xero?
In ApprovalMax, connect your Xero organisation, then create a new workflow for the bill document type. Define the approval steps, assign named approvers to each step, set threshold conditions if required, and configure escalation rules for items that exceed a waiting time limit. Test the workflow with a real invoice before going live. The most common configuration mistake is using “any approver” groups rather than named approvers, which reduces visibility in the dashboard and makes the audit trail harder to interpret.
What is the best way to track invoice approval status in real time?
Real-time approval tracking requires that invoices pass through a structured approval step in the system, not be approved directly from a draft state. For ApprovalMax users, the dashboard shows current status by step and approver. For teams using Xero native approvals, the Awaiting Approval bill list is the closest equivalent but doesn’t include ageing information natively. Adding a reporting tool (Syft, Fathom, or a custom export) to calculate days-in-queue provides the ageing view needed for proactive management.
Can ApprovalMax handle approval workflows across multiple entities?
Yes. ApprovalMax supports multi-entity approval workflows where each entity has its own workflow configuration. A financial controller can see approvals across entities from a single ApprovalMax login if they have the appropriate access. Each entity’s approvals remain separate in the audit trail, which is important for group structures with different directors or shareholders across entities. Pulsify’s multi-entity workflows offer a similar function with the addition of pre-approval validation across all entities.
How do I ensure the approval dashboard is actually used by the finance team?
Build the dashboard around a specific, recurring decision rather than general visibility. Define a weekly review process with a named owner. Configure escalation rules so the dashboard triggers action automatically, rather than requiring someone to notice a stalled item. Keep the default view filtered to actionable items: invoices over a threshold, invoices waiting more than a defined period, or invoices with unresolved exceptions. A dashboard that requires scrolling through 200 items to find 3 that need action will not be reviewed consistently.
Sources: ACCC Targeting Scams Report 2024 · ATO eInvoicing for business