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Supplier Payments

Prepare supplier requests, record ZAR advances, apply them to invoices and record unused refunds received. Understand approval and source evidence.

ConsultantConsultant AdminAccountantFinance ManagerSuper AdminLast reviewed 26 Oct 2026

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A supplier payment request is how you ask for money to be released to a hotel, airline, car rental company, or other provider. Each request is numbered (for example SPR-202608-0001), carries the supporting documents, and must be approved by someone other than the person who raised it before it can be paid.

This is a gate, not paperwork: for a GDS (RateHawk) booking in the booking queue, supplier payment status must be Approved or Paid before the Finalize with RateHawk action becomes available. Other booking checks still apply. Approval is not confirmation of a bank transfer or a hotel reservation; finalization is a separate step.

Before You Start: The Supplier Must Exist

The payment form only lets you pick from suppliers that already exist. There is no add-a-supplier-inline option. If the supplier is missing, go to Bookings > Suppliers first, click Add Supplier, and capture the supplier — including the bank fields (account name, account number, bank name, branch code, and optional SWIFT code). When a quotation link supplies a usable provider-cost amount and an explicitly named provider, the app can find or create and select that provider as a supplier. A missing provider name leaves selection to you; a failed supplier lookup blocks the linked form.

Creating a Payment Request

  1. Go to Documents > Supplier Payments and click New Request. If you are working a booking, start from the booking in the queue instead — that carries the booking link and can bring across the client name and attachments. The amount is read from linked source records, not from the price in the page link; review any suggestion as described below.
  2. Under Supplier & Payment Details, choose the Supplier, enter the Amount, pick the Currency (ZAR, USD, EUR or GBP), optionally set a Due Date, and write a Description. Supplier, currency, a positive whole-cent amount and description are required even for a draft. For example, enter 100.25, not 100.255.
  3. Optionally fill in the Client Name under Client Context. This is a free-text field, not a client picker.
  4. Under Link System Documents, search for and attach a Quotation, or use the approved booking request you opened from the booking queue. A Voucher is optional, because the supplier voucher is usually only issued after the booking is confirmed, which itself waits on this approval. Both selectors have a + Create New shortcut if the document does not exist yet.
  5. Under Upload Supporting Documents, upload the Client Order, Supplier Proforma Invoice and Bank Account Confirmation. These are marked optional, but see the checklist rule below.
  6. Click Save as Draft to come back later, or Submit for Approval to send it on. Submit stays disabled until supplier, amount, description and a linked quotation or booking request are all present.
Tip: When you arrive from the booking queue with client attachments, an Assign Booking Attachments card appears. Use the radio buttons to file each attachment as Client Order, Supplier Proforma or Bank Confirmation (or Skip) so you do not have to re-upload files the client already sent.

The Document Checklist and Justification

The Document Checklist card tracks five items: quotation or approved booking request linked (required), voucher linked, Client Order uploaded, Supplier Proforma Invoice uploaded and Bank Account Confirmation uploaded. If any of the four optional items is missing, a Missing documents justification box appears and you must type a reason. Submitting without one is blocked with “Please provide a justification for missing documents”. A supplier advance must match the approved source’s customer, organisation and booking reference. Missing or conflicting source evidence stops payment recording.

Bank Details Are Copied, Not Typed

There are no bank-detail fields on the payment form, and TravelFlow refuses a request that tries to send its own. Every time a draft is saved, the server copies the bank details from the supplier record the draft names, encrypted, so a request always pays the supplier record’s account. Pick a different supplier and save, and the request takes that supplier’s details, or none if it has none. They are shown on the request detail page under Supplier Bank Details.

Consultant admins, accountants, finance admins and super admins see the details in full, and each time they open them the audit log records who did. A consultant sees the account number to its last four digits and the branch and SWIFT codes hidden. If the details are missing or wrong, stop and ask a finance administrator to resolve the request. Approved details cannot be edited in place.

Approval Workflow

Approvers are Finance Managers (accountant admins), Consultant Admins and Super Admins. The app attempts to notify approvers on submission, but check the request list if a notification is missing. Accountants may record an approved payment, but cannot approve requests.

Segregation of duties: you can never approve your own request. The Approve and Reject buttons are hidden from the creator. Approval is also checked on the server: another authorized administrator must approve the request.
  1. Open Approve from the request detail or Accounts Payable screen.
  2. Check the freshly loaded supplier, amount, currency, VAT, description and saved bank details. Open the supporting quotation and review the supporting documents.
  3. Add optional notes, then choose Approve reviewed request. If the saved request changes, approval stops. Choose Reload details, check the new details and re-enter any notes before confirming again.

Approval does not transfer money or post a journal. It records who approved the reviewed request and when. Approval in USD, EUR or GBP does not enable foreign-currency settlement recording.

Rejection is not a dead end: a rejected request is sent back to Draft with the reason shown in a red banner when you reopen it for editing. Fix the problem and submit again.

Recording a Payment Already Made

Accountants, Finance Managers, Consultant Admins and Super Admins can record an approved supplier payment. Consultants cannot record supplier payments. Recording currently accepts ZAR only and does not convert foreign currency. Recording does not transfer money.

  1. Use Record payment in Accounts Payable or Mark as Paid on the supplier request detail.
  2. Compare the current saved supplier, gross amount, VAT and bank details with the actual bank payment. Both screens require the actual payment date, paying bank or cash account and reference. None is replaced with a recording-day or account default.
  3. Confirm the reviewed payment. Changed or invalid details stop recording; use Reload details and review again. Reloading clears the old reference, date and account selection. A changed paying account also requires another review.
  4. A connection error does not prove that recording failed. Check the saved request before trying again. An unchanged retry of the same reviewed payment can confirm the existing entry without posting twice; inconsistent history requires accounting review.
What this writes today: the paid status and journal are saved together. The gross amount debits Supplier Advances (1320) and credits the selected bank or cash account; VAT is not claimed again. The journal uses the actual settlement date and that date’s open accounting period. The server recording timestamp is separate, and saved detail shows the retained date and account. Missing historical evidence is not invented. The separate active ZAR asset account must exist; do not reset the chart or use Prepaid Expenses. Issuing a matched invoice applies the available advance to that supplier’s liability. For payments recorded after issuance, open Supplier advance balance and actionson the paid request, review the unused amount and select the issued invoice. Invoice credits and voids return any over-applied amount to the advance asset. Use Record refund received only after the supplier has actually returned cash; enter the amount, actual date, receiving account and bank reference. Reload the verified history after confirmation or an uncertain outcome before doing anything again. Historical payments posted directly to Accounts Payable require finance reconciliation; they are not silently converted to advances. See the calculation and journal register for CALC-084, CALC-085 and the supplier-payment journal.

Tracking Payment Status

  • Draft — Being prepared. The creator sees Edit on the detail page. Delete is shown only to a super admin who created that draft.
  • Pending Approval — Submitted and waiting on an approver.
  • Approved — Authorised. This is the state that unlocks GDS finalization.
  • Paid — Payment recorded by an authorized staff member, with its journal entry.
  • Rejected — A filter option; in practice a rejection returns the request to Draft with the reason attached.
  • Voided — An unpaid request cancelled by an authorized administrator with a reason. Paid requests cannot be voided here, and records containing payment evidence require review. Voided requests are excluded from the summary tiles.

The list at Documents > Supplier Payments lets you search by request number, supplier, description or client, and filter by status, date range and amount range. Requests sitting in Pending Approval pick up an ageing badge — a day count from one day, orange from three days, and a red “overdue” badge from five days. This counts completed 24-hour periods since the request was last updated while pending, not the supplier due date. High value currently means at least 50,000 in the request currency, without exchange-rate conversion; it is not a rand-equivalent comparison or a separate approval permission.

Important: the amount you enter must be what you owe the supplier, not what the client pays you. A linked booking uses its reviewed supplier-cost amount and currency together, or its explicit provider-cost pair when no reviewed pricing exists. Only a quotation without a booking link can use its own explicit provider-cost pair. A present invalid source is not replaced with another price. Missing usable pricing leaves amount and currency blank for you to check against the supplier invoice. A failed linked-document read blocks saving until reloaded. Existing requests are not automatically re-priced. A suggested cost does not confirm current rate availability or establish a payable.