Article Contents
- Introduction
- Invoice Statuses
- Who Can Approve Invoices?
- Project Captains and the Internal Contact Person
- Sending Invoices
- Viewing Invoice History
Introduction
Hiro records the key steps in an invoice’s lifecycle, including when it is prepared, submitted for review, approved, and sent.
Invoice statuses help separate work that is still being prepared from work that is ready for review, and from invoices that have been approved for financial reporting and sending.
You do not need to use every status for every invoice. If an invoice is ready and you have invoice approval privileges, you can approve it straight from draft. The submitted status is useful when one person prepares the invoice and another person needs to review or approve it.
Invoice Statuses
Draft
Use Draft while an invoice is still being prepared.
Draft invoices are for shaping the billing details before review. They let the people closest to the work capture what was delivered, check the amounts, and align the invoice with the job before it moves into approval.
Users without invoice approval privileges can raise or edit draft invoices only for jobs where they are on the project team. This lets project teams prepare invoice details without giving them authority to approve the invoice.
In the invoice list, non-privileged users normally see invoices where they are the internal contact person. They can also use Show invoices for jobs I’m a team member of to include invoices for jobs where they are on the project team.
Draft invoices are pre-approval invoices. They do not count towards approved revenue, outstanding invoice totals, or paid/unpaid invoice filters.
Submitted
Use Submitted when an invoice is ready for review.
Submitted invoices create a clear handover point between preparation and approval. The project team has prepared the invoice, but a privileged user still needs to check and approve it before it becomes final.
Submitted invoices are still awaiting approval. They do not count towards approved revenue, outstanding invoice totals, or paid/unpaid invoice filters until they are approved.
For users without invoice approval privileges, submitted invoices are read-only. If they need to change a submitted invoice, they must revert it to draft first, make the changes, and then submit it again for review.
Users with invoice approval privileges can edit a submitted invoice, save it as submitted, revert it to draft, or approve it.
On invoice PDFs, submitted invoices are labelled as Pending.
Approved
Use Approved when the invoice has been reviewed and accepted as final.
Approved invoices count towards approved revenue, outstanding invoice totals, paid/unpaid invoice filters, sending, and related financial reporting.
Only users with invoice approval privileges can approve invoices.
Once an invoice is approved, it cannot be moved back to submitted or draft.
Who Can Approve Invoices?
Hiro is designed to help the people closest to the work take ownership of the invoicing process. Project Captains and project team members are encouraged to prepare draft invoices because they usually have the clearest view of what was delivered, what changed, and what still needs attention.
Final approval is deliberately more controlled. Invoices can be approved by:
Global Administrators
Users with the Financial privilege: View all and approve invoice privileges
This means project teams can help build accurate invoices from the project detail, while final approval remains with users who have been given responsibility for financial review and release.
This approval privilege is configured by a Global Administrator from:
Settings > User Privileges & Notifications > Financial tab
Being a Project Captain does not automatically grant invoice approval rights. A Project Captain may be the invoice’s internal contact person and may have visibility of invoices connected to their projects, but approving invoices requires the specific approval privilege above.
Learn more about user privileges.
Project Captains and the Internal Contact Person
When creating or editing an invoice, the internal contact person must be a current captain for the relevant job or department. This helps keep responsibility for the invoice connected to the project team.
This is different from invoice approval. Being the internal contact person or Project Captain helps identify who is responsible for the job/invoice context, but it does not automatically grant approval rights.
Sending Invoices
Invoice status and sent status are separate.
Only Approved invoices are eligible to be sent to a client. Draft and submitted invoices are still pre-approval invoices, so they cannot be sent.
Once an invoice has been approved, the sent status records whether it has been sent to the client.
Approving an invoice does not, by itself, mean the invoice has been emailed to the client.
Learn more about sending invoices.
Viewing Invoice History
To see the history of an invoice:
Click the Edit pencil icon next to the invoice.
Scroll to the notes section at the bottom of the invoice.
The notes section records key invoice events such as creation, submission for approval, reverting to draft, approval, sent/unsent changes, email sending outcomes and selected invoice detail changes.