ApprovalMax agent checks supplier bills against payment history
Bills that break a supplier’s usual pattern get an amber or red flag before sign-off. The agent cannot approve, reject or change a bill, a limit the company says it set before writing any code
- Approval Agent: bills only, on the Advanced plan and above
- Search Agent: included on every plan and switched on per user
- Approval Agent can be switched off for the whole organization by an admin or workflow manager
- Data: processed in the EU, with only a narrow amount of text sent and never the bill or its attachments, according to ApprovalMax
- ApprovalMax says customer data is not used to train AI models
On the plans where the agent runs, the supplier check becomes a setting the finance team controls rather than a habit each approver keeps. Because the agent writes nothing to the ledger, the audit trail still records a person’s decision rather than the software’s. It also puts AI anomaly checks inside approval software that firms already run, rather than in a separate accounts payable product.
“Yes, AI can probably draft a VAT return quite well, but it cannot be the one who signs it.”Dan Schonfeld, group chief financial officer, ApprovalMax
ApprovalMax launched Approval Intelligence on 12 October, adding AI agents to its bill approval software for Xero and QuickBooks Online customers. The first, the Approval Agent, checks a bill against the customer’s history with that supplier and flags spend well above the usual amount, a supplier who has moved from quarterly to monthly billing, a cost coded to an unusual account or a supplier never paid before.
Each bill gets a green, amber or red status on the approval screen, with a line of explanation such as “This supplier used to bill quarterly.” Admins can set how sensitive the checks are. A second tool, the Search Agent, answers plain-language questions about bills, purchase orders and approval history, such as which bills are still waiting with a named approver.
IT Brief UK reported that ApprovalMax, a London-based company founded in 2014, plans further agents under the Approval Intelligence name. The company says more than 20,000 businesses use its software, which also connects to Oracle NetSuite.
In a post on the company’s blog, Dan Schonfeld, ApprovalMax’s group chief financial officer, said much of the market was selling “the promise of a smaller team”, with more of the process “running unwatched” while the approver still answered for any payment that went wrong. “Yes, AI can probably draft a VAT return quite well, but it cannot be the one who signs it,” Schonfeld said.
Sources
- ApprovalMax, “Put the supplier’s history in front of every approver with Approval Intelligence”, blog post, 12 October 2026. https://blog.approvalmax.com/put-the-suppliers-history-in-front-of-every-approver-with-approval-intelligence-1
- Dan Schonfeld, ApprovalMax, “Where we stand on AI, and what we’ve built”, blog post. https://blog.approvalmax.com/where-we-stand-on-ai
- ApprovalMax, Approval Intelligence feature page. https://approvalmax.com/features/approval-intelligence
- Karen Joy Bacudo, “ApprovalMax launches AI bill checks for Xero users”, IT Brief UK, 13 October 2026. https://itbrief.co.uk/story/approvalmax-launches-ai-bill-checks-for-xero-users
