Purchase requisition approval process

Before a purchase requisition can be converted to a purchase order or a request for quotation (RFQ), it must be approved by an approver or a list of approvers. An approver is a valid employee or department authorized to approve submitted requisitions. Approvers can approve or reject requisitions.

Note

The External Approval check box in the Purchase Requisition Parameters (tdpur0100m200) session determines if purchase requisitions are approved and rejected in LN or outside LN. If approval is handled outside LN, after submitting a purchase requisition for approval, the requisition is judged externally and returned to LN with the Approved or Rejected status, or with the Pending Approval status and the Spend Approved check box selected on the requisition header. In case of external approval, this topic is not further applicable.

Specifying the approver list

In the Approvers (tdpur2105m000) session, you can maintain a list of valid requisition approvers (individuals or departments) and define a hierarchy in the approval structure.

Before adding to the approver list, the following master data must be defined:

  1. Define employees and departments in the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) and Departments (tcmcs0565m000) sessions.
  2. Because an individual approver can belong to only one department, define an employee's department defaults in the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) session.
  3. The approver's effective date and expiry date must be valid and must be verified in the employee record in the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) session. Also, the Approver, as defined in the Approvers (tdpur2105m000) session, must have a valid Effective Date and Expiry Date.
Note
  • The Department field in the Approvers (tdpur2105m000) session is a mandatory field. If an approver is selected in the Approver field of the Approvers (tdpur2105m000) session, the approver must belong to the selected approver department.
  • Only approver departments that are purchase offices and individual approvers from the purchase office are allowed to perform final approval on a purchase requisition.

Use the Print Approvers (tdpur2405m000) session to print the approver list.

Approving or rejecting purchase requisitions

When a purchase requisition is submitted for approval, based on the linked approval list from the Approvers (tdpur2105m000) session, approval records are inserted in the Purchase Requisition Approval Progress (tdpur2506m000) session.

Usually, the following steps are caried out in the approval process:

  1. The first approval record is filled with the Approver and Approver Department from the requisition header. If the approver has a parent approver in the approver list, a next approval record is inserted with this parent approver. The complete approver tree is inserted based on the parent approvers in the approver list. These approval records have the pending approval status.
  2. When the first approver approves or rejects the requisition, the status of the approval record changes from Pending Approval to Approved or Rejected. When the requisition is approved by the first approver, the Approver and Approver Department fields on the requisition header are updated with the approver and approver department of the next approval record/next approver.
  3. When the requisition is approved by all approvers on the approver list, the requisition status is changed from Pending Approval to approved. If an approval record with the Pending Approval is still available in the Purchase Requisition Approval Progress (tdpur2506m000) session, which means a next approver must still judge the requisition, the requisition status remains Pending Approval.
Note
  • In the Purchase Requisition Approval Progress (tdpur2506m000) session, which also appears as a tab in the Purchase Requisition - Lines (tdpur2600m000) session, approvers can view if requisitions are submitted to them for approval.
  • The Approval Authorization field in the Purchase Requisition Parameters (tdpur0100m200) session determines how the approval list is used in the purchase requisition approval process.
  • Prior to approving the purchase requisition, approvers can review the requisition lines on the Requisition Lines tab of the Purchase Requisition - Lines (tdpur2600m000) session and select the Rejected check box if they want to reject a specific requisition line.
  • In the Purchase Requisitions (tdpur2501m000) session, the Allow Partial Rejection check box determines whether an Approved purchase requisition can contain requisition lines that are rejected.
  • If a requisition is rejected by an approver, a requester can modify the purchase requisition. When a requisition with the modified status is resubmitted for approval, in the Purchase Requisition Approval Progress (tdpur2506m000) session, an additional approval record is inserted for the approver that rejected the requisition. This approval record has the Pending Approval status.
  • If the Budget Exception check box is selected for one or more requisition lines, the requisition cannot be approved. First the budget exception must be handled.

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