The ApprovalMax Fraud Detection features are designed to improve oversight, highlight potential risks and support financial compliance by notifying Administrators of suspicious activities.
Changes after approval
Changes after approval
The Changes After Approval feature tracks modifications made to a document in your accounting system after it has already been approved in ApprovalMax. When a tracked change occurs, ApprovalMax sends a notification email to the Organisation Administrator.
The changes tracked typically involve fields such as:
Amount
Vendor/Supplier
Category
Location
Expense
Administrators can configure exactly which fields should trigger a Fraud Detection notification by adjusting the Fraud Detection settings in the approval workflow.
This is how you activate the feature
In the main menu, select your Organisation.
Go to Approval workflows and open the relevant workflow (e.g. Bill, Purchase Order):
Click on the Gear icon in the top right-hand corner to open the workflow settings:
Navigate to Fraud Detection in the left-hand panel:
Here, you’ll see a list of trackable fields from which you can select the ones that are to be monitored for changes after a request has been approved. In the example below, any change in the Account, Item or Currency will trigger a notification:
Save your changes and update/activate the workflow.
Administrators can review any changes by checking:
The ApprovalMax audit report
To see the detailed history of changes made (i.e. both the previous and the new value), open the ApprovalMax audit report in side-by-side view and compare the originally approved values against the updated ones as reflected in the connected accounting system.
Below you see that because Account was selected as a field to be monitored, a change in the account number from 260-Other Revenue to 960-Retained Earnings triggered a notification:
The audit trail or history in the connected accounting system
For QuickBooks Online: open the respective document in QuickBooks Online and check its audit history. The modified value will be highlighted in the change log.
For Xero: open the relevant document in Xero and view the history section. The change will be marked as Edited but only the new value is shown - the original value is not retained in Xero.
For NetSuite: open the document in NetSuite and navigate to the System Notes under the System Information tab.
Please note: Changes are tracked and will trigger a notification even if they’re not visible in the history of specific documents.
Please note: Once enabled, any document that is changed after approval will display a warning note beneath the header and a icon next to the APPROVED status:
Bypassing the approval workflow / Pulling from a connected Organisation
Bypassing the approval workflow / Pulling from a connected Organisation
This feature detects when documents are created and approved directly in your connected accounting system, without going through the approval workflow in ApprovalMax.
It has a different name depending on your connected platform:
Xero and NetSuite: Bypassing the Approval Workflow
QuickBooks Online: Pulling from a Connected Organisation
This is how you activate the feature
In the main menu, select your Organisation.
Go to Approval workflows and open the relevant workflow (e.g. Bill, PO):
Click on the Gear icon to open the workflow settings:
Navigate to the Fraud Detection tab.
If your Organisation is connected to Xero or NetSuite, you'll see the following options:
If your Organisation is connected to QuickBooks Online, you'll see slightly different options:
To enable this feature in either scenario, simply select "Pull this document to ApprovalMax" and select the pulling start date.
For Xero and NetSuite Organisations, there's also the option to activate the checkbox for "Notify the Organisation Administrators" so that they receive email alerts for bypassed approvals.
Please note: In QuickBooks Online connected workflows, there is no checkbox for Administrator notifications, they will not be notified about documents pulled from QuickBooks Online.
Once you have enabled the feature and selected the pulling start date, save your changes and update/activate the workflow.
With this feature enabled and a pulling start date specified, any document that is approved outside of ApprovalMax will be:
Pulled into ApprovalMax during the next synchronisation between the connected system and ApprovalMax (within approx. 1-2 hours)
Please note: You can manually trigger document synchronisation at any time via the Sync icon in the top right-hand corner of your workflow:
Marked as Approved
Flagged with an audit comment stating that it bypassed the approval workflow:
Also, the Organisation Administrator will be notified of this activity by email (only for Xero and NetSuite).
Please note: Only documents pulled into ApprovalMax will trigger a notification. If a document remains in your accounting system and is not synced, no alert will be sent.
Important note for Xero and NetSuite: Activating this feature is useful for businesses wanting to ensure that all finance documents are routed through ApprovalMax for managerial approval. However, if a company creates and approves such documents directly in their accounting system as part of their normal process (e.g. in an order management software), turning on this feature may cause the Administrators being flooded with notification emails, and lots of finance documents sent for approval to ApprovalMax unnecessarily.
Setting or changing the pulling date
Setting or changing the pulling date
When enabling the Fraud Detection - Bypassing the Approval Workflow (or Pulling from a Connected Organisation in QuickBooks Online) feature, you have to select a pulling date.
This defines the starting point from which, onwards, ApprovalMax will monitor and pull documents that were approved outside the platform:
This feature only applies to documents that are approved on or after the selected date. Any documents approved before this date will be ignored.
Please note: The pulling date can only be set once - at the time of enabling the feature. Once you've saved the date, you cannot modify it. If you do need to change this date, please contact Support.