# Documents, payment requests and expense approvals in one ledger > The documents and approvals module in Financist stores invoices, acts and delivery notes, links payments to them and shows automatically whether a document is paid in full or in part. Expense requests follow a configurable approval chain: approvers, payer and document recipient. Once paid, a request creates a real transaction in your books. Keep invoices and acts, link payments to them, and run expense requests through an approval chain with clear responsibility at each step. ## What it is and why it matters A **document** in Financist is a record of a business event with a counterparty: an invoice, an act, a delivery note, a receipt, a contract or another file. It has a number, a date, lines with quantity, price and VAT, attachments and linked payments. An **expense request** is an employee’s request for payment that must be approved before the money leaves an account. Together they close a common gap in small businesses: the invoice sits in an inbox, approval happens in a messenger, and the payment is later lost in a spreadsheet. Here the invoice, the decision and the payment are connected in one chain, and the [payment calendar](https://findir.rozum.one/en/features/payment-calendar/) sees what needs to be paid and when. ### Payment status is calculated automatically A document does not carry a manual “paid” flag. Its status (unpaid, partially paid, paid) is derived from linked transactions: the system compares the document amount with the sum of linked payments. Only a compatible transaction can be linked: a purchase is paid by an expense, a sale is settled by an income. ## What the module offers - **Documents with lines** — Invoice, act, delivery note, receipt, contract. Lines with quantity, price and VAT, draft or posted state, duplication, archive and bulk change of project or counterparty. - **Numbering series** — Prefix and suffix with year and month tokens, a zero-padded counter, reset yearly or monthly. Numbers are issued automatically and a duplicate within a type is blocked. - **Recurring templates** — A regular document, such as monthly rent, can be generated from a template. Overdue templates are run with a button. - **Approval chains** — Steps: initiators, approvers, payer, document recipient. Approvers act as “any one” or “all”, steps run in sequence or in parallel. Conditions by amount, category, project and currency. - **Expense requests** — Create, approve, reject or return with a mandatory comment, recall, resubmit. Everything is recorded in the request history. - **Notifications** — An in-app event feed: approval requested, decision made, paid, documents requested. A manager can send reminders for stages that have waited too long. ## How a payment request moves through the system An example of the full cycle from request to closed documents. 1. **An employee creates the request** — They enter the amount, account, category, project and counterparty, and attach a document and files. Financist suggests the chain that fits the conditions, or you can pick one manually. 2. **Approvers decide** — Each approver sees the request in their inbox. Rejecting or returning without a comment is not possible. The initiator does not approve their own request unless the chain explicitly allows it. 3. **The payer pays** — The payer picks an account in the request currency. Financist creates a real expense transaction with category, counterparty and project, and links it to the document. 4. **Documents are closed** — If the chain requires it, the request waits for the original documents. The document recipient closes it and the cycle is complete. ## Who it is for - **Small businesses and hotels** where an owner or department head approves spending and an accountant pays. - **Teams with several projects**: a chain can be tied to a project, category or amount threshold. - **Owners** who want to see who approved what and when, without reading message threads. Access is split by permission: viewing documents, managing them, creating requests or managing chains can be given to different roles, see [team and access](https://findir.rozum.one/en/features/team-access/). Stock, services and fixed assets are covered on the [inventory and assets](https://findir.rozum.one/en/features/inventory-assets/) page. What the module does not do: it does not generate printed forms or PDFs for invoices and acts, and notifications are shown in the app rather than sent by e-mail. ## See what an approval looks like **See what an approval looks like** In demo mode you can open documents, requests and chains on sample data and walk through the whole cycle yourself. [Try the demo](https://findir.rozum.one/app/) ## Frequently asked questions ### Can I link a payment to an invoice or an act? Yes. You link actual transactions with the same counterparty and a compatible direction: a purchase is paid by an expense, a sale by an income. Several payments can be linked to one document, or an amount can be split. The payment status (unpaid, partially paid, paid) is calculated by the system. ### How do I set up an approval chain based on amount? In the chain you set conditions: minimum and maximum amount, categories, projects, currency and validity period. When an employee creates a request, Financist picks the matching chain by priority. Steps can have their own conditions and are skipped if the request does not match. ### What happens if a request is rejected? The approver must write a comment. The request gets the status “rejected” and goes back to the initiator, who can fix it and resubmit. A new approval round then starts on the current chain. Changing the amount, category or project of a pending request also restarts approval. ### Does paying a request create a transaction in the books? Yes. When the payer marks the request as paid, Financist creates an expense transaction from the chosen account with category, counterparty, project and a link to the document. Cash flow reports and the payment calendar include it immediately, with no re-entry. ### Does the system send notifications by e-mail? Currently approval notifications appear in the app: an event feed and counters in the inbox. A manager can trigger reminders for stages that have waited too long. This module does not send e-mails. --- Source: https://findir.rozum.one/en/features/documents-approvals/