Why was my invoice auto-approved or auto-submitted?

Sometimes an invoice shows up already submitted or already approved without you doing anything. That’s because your client can switch on automation for your contract. Here’s what each one means.

Auto-submitted

If your client turns on auto-submit for a recurring monthly (fixed) contract, your monthly invoice is created and sent for review automatically — it appears as Under Review instead of Draft, so there’s no Submit step for you to do.

This is different from an invoice simply being created for you — for that, see Why are some of my invoices generated automatically?.

Auto-approved

Your client can also set rules that approve invoices automatically, skipping manual review. An invoice may be auto-approved when:

• It’s a fixed monthly amount your client has set to auto-approve.
• The amount is below a threshold your client set.
• It’s an hourly or daily invoice and all the timesheets behind it are approved.
• It wasn’t reviewed within your client’s review window, so it’s auto-approved after a timeout.

When this happens, your invoice timeline shows an Auto-approved event with the reason.

What you’ll see

• Auto-submitted → the invoice is already Under Review without you submitting it.
• Auto-approved → the invoice is already Approved, with a note in its timeline explaining why.

Either way, it then continues through the normal stages — see How invoicing works (statuses explained).

Do I control this?

No — auto-submit and auto-approve are your client’s settings, not yours. They’re there to speed things up and get you paid faster.