Can billing account viewer approve invoices?
4 Answers
It can only "view billing account cost information and transactions".
https://cloud.google.com/billing/v1/how-tos/access-control#tbl_roles
According to the "Billing Access Control" video, they can (around 8:35 time mark). I imagine that seeing the bill is sufficient for you to send them the proper amount of money? Link to documentation on what an invoice looks like. https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/read-invoice
But approving an invoice is also critical and it should require roles beyond "billing account viewer " I guess… I was not able to get the details digged in from the GCP docs though. Its little confusing to me as well.
I believe the invoice approval is not done within GCP, but it’s more of a company internal action. Obviously, to be able to process invoices for your company, you need to be able to see them.
In the documentation https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-access there is explicitly written among the examples. In the Scenario "Separate financial planning & procurement functions"
User: Account Payable
Role:Billing Account Viewer
Activity: Approve invoices
Yes the billing account viewer can approve invoices
Scenario: Separate financial planning & procurement functions User type Billing IAM roles Billing activities Procurement or Central IT Billing Account Administrator Manage payment instrument. Set budget alerts. Communicate spend to development teams. Financial planning Billing Account Viewer View billing reports. Process exports. Communicate with CxO. Accounts payable Billing Account Viewer Approve invoices.
The above table is in the link: https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-access