Having the acknowledger is really down to whether it is a requirement for your business.  It is optional in the IFS flow.  Authorizer is required for IFS and typically required for the business.  Acknowledger might be someone who just needs to note or agree to the invoice, but isn’t the responsible person for official signoff.

If not using the full invoice authorization process, then Authorizer could be as simple as the person entering the invoice, in which case the business process doesn’t cross over the IFS process.  The Authorizer is just setup because it is necessary in the flow.

Hi @Dennis Megaffin ,

The Authorizer will be the user who will actually authorize the postings. The acknowledger is the person who confirms whether the invoice goods were actually received, and checks whether the postings are correct and acceptable. The acknowledger will also check whether the correct authorizers are connected. A posting line cannot be authorized when an acknowledger has not set the same posting line to the Acknowledged status. It is required to have at least one authorizer for each invoice line, but it is not a must to have an acknowledger for each invoice line.

Depending on the business requirement, you can add an acknowledger role to ease off the burden on the authroizer. Acknowledger will make sure that everything is in order (goods as well as the postings), so that the authroizer does not need to check everything from scratch. This makes the authroization process faster and efficient. 

Best Regards,

Sachin

Hi @Dennis Megaffin,

Acknowledge and Authorize functions are differ from each other. An Acknowledger confirms that the invoiced goods are received in to the company. (EX: member from warehouse). An Authorizer authorizes the transaction and the postings related to the transaction (EX: Finance manager). Therefore in order to post an invoice, Authorizer role is mandatory and Acknowledger role is not mandatory. These roles has been created to cater different requirements of customers.

Kind Regards,

Kalpa.

Thanks everyone, all of these answers were very informative!

If you are using Supplier Invoice Workflow, you can find additional explanations for Invoice Posting Authorizers in IFS Online documentation under BDR for Posting Authorization.

In addition to the explanation of the two types of Invoice Posting Authorizers, mentioned in the examples already provided, the process flow and documents in this section explain how Invoice Posting Authorizers may optionally be used in Automatic Authorization functionality which provides options to define Authorizer Groups and Authorization Rules, and optionally configure automatic invoice posting authorizations either for all invoices, or based on specified invoice posting amount limits, invoice posting code part combinations, invoice recipient and/or supplier as well as the option to inherit authorizers from IFS/Purchasing via the Inherit Authorizer(s) from IFS/Purchase checkbox on the Supplier Invoice Workflow subtab in the Company window.

Invoice Posting Authorizers are also optionally used in automatic Supplier Invoice Notifications

This may be overkill for your needs, however, it can be very useful for those who want to automate the invoice posting approval process and be notified of exceptions to specified rules.

Hope this additional information is helpful.

Kind regards,

Sheri