Three Signatures You Cannot See
Once matched, an invoice waits for people to approve it. The chain is invisible, has no deadline, and is where most of the delay lives.
Theirswho controls this stretch
Once an invoice has matched, it waits for approval: one, two or three named people who must agree the money may be paid. The chain is invisible from outside, has no deadline attached to any step, and is where most of the elapsed time usually goes.
The practical point in “Three Signatures You Cannot See” is that getting paid depends on records somebody can explain. A small team considering check the official solution page for how to measure employee productivity can organise time and project evidence before invoicing, with transparent settings, proportionate collection and a visible correction route.
Nothing about it is unreasonable, and almost none of it is reachable.
Additional context for “Three Signatures You Cannot See” is available through SCORE financial resources. A sound review separates the work record, invoice, approval and final settlement.
What approval is for
Confirming that the spend is right, within budget, and for something the organisation wanted. A control, operating as designed.
| What you can influence | What you cannot |
|---|---|
| The date the invoice enters the chain | How many signatures it needs |
| Whether each approver can say yes without asking | Who is in the chain |
| Whether somebody internally knows you are waiting | Who is on holiday |
| Whether you know where it currently sits | The thresholds |
Why approval takes the time it does
Because approving invoices is nobody's main job, because approvers are senior enough to be busy, and because there is rarely a service level attached.
An invoice arriving the day somebody goes on leave can wait a fortnight.
Who is in the chain
Typically the budget holder, sometimes their manager above a threshold, sometimes a second function for particular categories.
The threshold matters: the same supplier's larger invoice may take twice as long as the small one.
Delegation
Well-run organisations delegate approval during absences. Many do not, and nobody notices until a queue builds.
This is the most common single cause of an unexplained three-week gap.
What you can do about it
Almost nothing directly. You cannot see the queue, cannot contact the approver, and have no standing if you could.
What is available is asking your contact to nudge it, which costs them something and is sometimes exactly right.
Asking well
"It's matched and sitting with approvals — is there anything I can send that would help?" Short, specific, offers something.
It gives your contact a forwardable message rather than a complaint.
Thresholds
Worth knowing: at what value does a second approver appear. Invoicing below the threshold, where the work genuinely divides, can be legitimate and much faster.
Splitting an invoice purely to dodge a control is not that, and is usually detectable.
Why the chain lengthens
Reorganisations, cost control programmes, a bad experience with another supplier.
A chain that was two people last year may be four this year, and nobody tells suppliers.
What approval does not mean
That you will be paid soon. It means the invoice can now enter a payment run, which is a separate wait with its own dates.
The question worth asking at thirty days
"Has it been approved, and if so which run is it in?" Two facts, available from accounts payable, that between them explain almost every delay.
What the chain is protecting against
Approval exists because organisations are defrauded by false invoices and by internal staff authorising their own spending, and because auditors require evidence that expenditure was sanctioned by somebody entitled to sanction it.
Every signature in the chain corresponds to a control somebody had to justify.
This is worth knowing because it sets the limits of what is available to you. The chain will not be shortened for a supplier, bypassed for urgency, or waived because the sum is small — the controls apply without reference to the particular invoice. What can sometimes be done is to find out where the invoice currently sits, and that is a different request, usually answerable and occasionally enough.
What a supplier can actually influence
Three things, none of them the chain itself.
The date the invoice enters it, which is entirely yours. Whether the invoice is legible enough that each approver can say yes without asking a question, which is a matter of description and reference. And whether somebody internally knows that a supplier is waiting, which is what the copy to your contact achieves.
After that there is only information: asking, at a sensible point, where the invoice has got to and who holds it.
Suppliers who understand this stop spending effort on urgency and start spending it on legibility, which is the only input to the approval process they control. An invoice that arrives early, matches cleanly and describes recognisable work passes a three-signature chain faster than an identical sum chased weekly, because at no point does anybody need to find anything out.
The absence nobody schedules around
Chains are built from named individuals, and individuals take leave. In most systems a signature can be delegated, and in practice the delegation is often set up after somebody notices a queue building rather than before the holiday starts.
An invoice can therefore wait a fortnight on one person's absence without any rule being broken and without anybody internally noticing.
It is the single commonest cause of a long, unexplained hold, and it is also the one case where asking politely at the right moment produces a result, because a delegate can usually be arranged the same day once somebody is told the queue exists.
The honest summary
This stretch belongs entirely to them. Knowing that is worth something: it tells you that the delay is not yours to fix, and that effort spent on your own process will not shorten it.