ApproveThis manages your Clientary Integration approvals.

When Billing Meets Approval Muscle

Let’s get real: nothing kills momentum like waiting for Karen in accounting to approve an invoice while your client’s payment deadline looms. Clientary handles the money stuff cleanly – invoices, expenses, tracking billable hours. ApproveThis? It’s the hammer that smashes approval bottlenecks. Together through Zapier, they’re like caffeine for your financial workflows.

Here’s why mid-sized companies care: Clientary keeps client billing tidy but doesn’t enforce who signs off on what. ApproveThis adds guardrails without the paperwork. Think of it as your digital bouncer – only letting through expenses that meet policy, invoices that match project specs, and client deals that make actual sense.

Three Ways This Combo Actually Works

1. Expense Approvals That Don’t Require Mind Reading

Scenario: Your sales team submits $2k in client dinner receipts via Clientary. Without automation, finance has to chase down department heads for sign-offs. With the integration:

• Clientary logs the expense → ApproveThis routes it based on amount, department, or project
• VP gets an email: “Approve this Taco Tuesday spend? Yes/No”
• Approval triggers Clientary to process reimbursement

Real-world win: A 200-person marketing agency cut expense approval time from 6 days to 8 hours. Their secret? Using ApproveThis’ thresholds to auto-approve anything under $500 and escalate bigger spends to the right exec.

2. Invoices That Generate Themselves (No, Really)

Problem: Consulting firms often bill against approved project scopes. But manually cross-checking SOWs with invoices? That’s how junior accountants get burnout.

The fix: When ApproveThis greenlights a project request (say, a 50-hour SEO audit), Zapier pings Clientary to create the corresponding invoice. Legal approved the scope? Finance gets a pre-populated invoice. No rekeying. No “wait, was this approved?”

Bonus: ApproveThis’ audit trail means when clients ask “Why are we being charged for this?”, you’ve got the approval chain ready. No more frantic digging through Slack history.

3. Lead Approval Without the Committee Meetings

Here’s where it gets spicy: Clientary’s CRM tracks leads, but sales teams waste cycles on unvetted prospects. Solution: Auto-trigger ApproveThis workflows when new leads hit certain criteria.

Example: A tech vendor uses Clientary to log leads from trade shows. Any lead from a Fortune 500 company auto-generates an approval request in ApproveThis. Sales ops gets a Slack alert, reviews lead details, and approves/denies right there. Approved leads get fast-tracked; rejects get automated “Thanks but no thanks” emails.

Why This Isn’t Just Another Integration

Clientary’s good at tracking time and sending invoices. ApproveThis doesn’t try to be an accounting tool. But together, they enforce something most companies suck at: accountability without micromanagement.

Take vacation coverage: Clientary knows when someone’s OOO. ApproveThis uses that to auto-reassign approvals. No more “I was on PTO” excuses. Or calculated fields – imagine auto-flagging invoices that exceed approved project budgets by 10%. That’s not just efficiency; it’s financial leak prevention.

And here’s the kicker: External clients or contractors can approve stuff in ApproveThis without needing a Clientary login. Perfect for agencies getting client sign-offs or manufacturers approving supplier invoices. No added license fees, no “Can you reset my password?” support tickets.

Setting This Up Without Losing Your Mind

Zapier’s the glue here. You’ll create two main “Zaps”:

1. Clientary → ApproveThis: Triggers when expenses, leads, or time entries hit certain thresholds. ApproveThis creates approval requests with mapped data (amount, client, notes).
2. ApproveThis → Clientary: When requests get approved, push invoices, update project statuses, or log payments automatically.

Pro tip: Use ApproveThis’ conditional logic to handle edge cases. Example: Expenses under $1k go to department managers; over $1k require CFO review. Clientary doesn’t care – it just processes what’s approved.

Who Actually Benefits? (Spoiler: Everyone)

Finance Teams

Get audit trails for every invoice and expense. Auto-flag anomalies (like duplicate reimbursements) using ApproveThis’ calculated fields. Stop playing detective every quarter-end.

Sales & Account Managers

Close deals faster with pre-approved discount thresholds in ApproveThis. Clientary auto-generates the correct contract. No more “Let me check with my manager” delays.

Operations Leaders

See approval bottlenecks in real-time dashboards. Notice that IT approvals take 3x longer than others? Maybe Bob from cybersecurity needs a backup approver.

The Bottom Line

Clientary keeps the lights on for billing. ApproveThis stops the “Who approved this?!” dumpster fires. Together, they’re the system you wish you had during last year’s audit panic.

This isn’t about replacing your accounting stack. It’s about adding guardrails so your team can move fast without breaking things. Or as one ApproveThis customer put it: “We finally stopped using ‘approval by Outlook’.”

Ready to stop herding cats? Get ApproveThis, connect your Clientary account via Zapier, and start treating approvals like the process they should be – not a corporate hazing ritual.