What happens when a junior staff member, a contractor, or an external partner acting on your organisation’s behalf needs to set up or initiate a payment?
Do you:
- Give them access to the functionality, and carry out regular audits to make sure they’re not abusing the privilege?
- Disable payments for anyone who isn’t an admin?
Both options require serious compromises.
With option one, you might not realise somebody’s been misusing the feature until it’s too late. At which point you might not be able to stop the payment or recoup the money.
Option two prevents such situations, but it creates a bottleneck. And what if somebody without payment privileges needs to make a time-sensitive payment, and can find nobody with authorisation to set it up for them?
ALT21’s brand new Payment Approvals workflow gives you the best of both worlds.
Anyone with access to the ALT21 platform can set up or initiate payments, eliminating the risk of bottlenecks and missed opportunities. But, when the user who sets up the payment doesn’t meet predefined criteria, an admin must approve it. Which means you can nip issues like errors and unauthorised payments in the bud.
What’s Payment Approvals (and how does it work)?
Payment Approvals adds an additional step — approval by a staff member with admin privileges — to the payment initiation process.
Anyone with access to the ALT21 platform can set up payments. But if the user is an agent — an ALT21 partner acting on your organisation’s behalf — or not an admin, the payment won’t be processed until approved by somebody with admin privileges.
This has three benefits:
An extra layer of security
Only payments set up or approved by admins go through, which helps prevent mistakes and unauthorised spending.
Greater efficiency
Admins don’t have to create every single payment within the organisation themselves.
More control
Give staff and agents more autonomy, while maintaining proper oversight.
Payment Approvals in action: Example
Say you’re a manufacturer based in the UK. You’ve bought €125,000 worth of raw materials from your supplier in Ireland. Their invoice has net 30 terms.
A finance assistant receives an email reminder from the supplier that their invoice is due within three days. Given the time-frame and the amount, the finance assistant actions this immediately, setting up a payment on the ALT21 platform.
With Payment Approvals enabled:
- The finance assistant’s line manager, or a peer with admin privileges, instantly receives an email alert
- The admin reviews the amount, beneficiary, and reason for payment, and approves or rejects it
- If they approve the payment, ALT21 processes it.
When is the Payment Approvals feature useful?
Payment Approvals is ideal if you regularly handle sensitive transactions, such as:
- High-value or time-sensitive payments like international bills or supplier invoices
- Transactions that have to be initiated by third-parties, such as treasury advisors or other intermediaries.
Think of Payment Approvals like two-factor authentication for your payments. Junior staff and third-party agents can get on with their jobs. But the feature enhances security and reduces the risk of mistakes by pausing payments until another set of eyes check them and confirm everything looks right.
Have other payment requirements or risk exposure?
Speak to an advisor for tailored guidance about which of our other products might be the best fit.
What’s next
Account owners can set up Payment Approvals so they’re triggered whenever a payment is created by a user without admin privileges.
We’re also working on several enhancements, including auto-approvals for payments below pre-set thresholds, and multi-stage approvals, where more than one person needs to review and approve a transaction.
We’re keen to hear users’ feedback, too, and plan to make further improvements and refinements based on what you tell us. So try Payment Approvals today and let us know what you think!
