Expense Management Business Rules
Expense Management business rules control how users submit invoice requests, credit card charges, and purchase requests. Admins configure these rules from Settings, Expenses, Business rules. Because these rules affect users across Expenses, align them with your established approval and expense processes.
Invoice Requests and Charges
Open Settings, select Expenses, and then select Business rules. Select Edit before changing a rule.
To let users edit general ledger distributions on invoice requests and charges, select Allow users to edit General ledger distributions. Clear this option to lock distributions.
Choose whether unapproved invoice requests and charges count toward budget totals.
Set how users can submit invoice requests and charges without attachments: allow submission, show a warning, or block submission.
To require attachments based on the amount of an invoice request, purchase request, or charge, enter an amount under Require attachment for invoice requests at or above amount.
Invoice requests, purchase requests, and credit card charges that meet or exceed this amount follow your Allow invoice requests and charges to be submitted without attachment selection. Amounts lower than this can be submitted without an attachment. Leave the amount blank to apply the Allow invoice requests and charges to be submitted without attachment setting to every amount.
Tip: The amount you enter applies separately to each invoice request, purchase request, or credit card charge.
Specify the label used for requestors.
Select Save.
Purchase Requests
Configure these rules to set purchase request requirements and approver permissions:
Require a General ledger account distribution requires an account distribution for each purchase request.
Require a vendor requires users to select a vendor for each request.
Allow purchase requests to be submitted without attachment determines whether users can submit a request without an attachment.
Refer to purchase request as and Refer to requestor as set the labels used for requests and requestors.
Allow approvers to edit the unit price and quantity (or total price) on Purchase request line items lets approvers change line item pricing or quantities. You can also choose whether those changes restart the approval workflow.
Include approved purchase request line items when checking budgets controls whether purchase request line items count toward budget totals.
Document Intelligence for Invoice Requests and Credit Card Charges
Note: Before users can generate invoice requests or upload receipts with Document Intelligence, an admin must enable generative AI features in your Blackbaud environment. Follow the instructions to opt in to generative AI features globally.
Document Intelligence uses Microsoft's Azure AI Document Intelligence and Blackbaud AI to extract data from uploaded invoices and charge receipts. It adds the extracted details to invoice requests or transaction charge details when users generate invoice requests or upload charge receipts for transactions.
To configure extraction, go to Settings, Expenses, Business rules, and Document Intelligence. Select Edit, update the rules, and select Save.
Extract invoice and receipt line items from uploaded files into distributions.
Generate descriptions automatically.
Set preferred vendors for credit card charges. Users select Preferred credit card vendors during upload. Document Intelligence identifies the merchant category and maps the charge to the closest matching vendor. A preferred vendor can represent a category such as Hotels, Restaurants, or Purchase card.
Select or clear supported file types to control which files users can upload. Each supported type is selected by default.
Choose which fields to retain when users copy previous charges or copy previous invoice requests. When users copy an earlier transaction or invoice, the selected fields replace values extracted from the uploaded file.