Processing Approvals

Once set up, the purchasing approvals can be used within a purchase order and/or invoice. Approvals can operate in either purchase orders, invoices or both. The actual processing of an approval is exactly the same for an order or invoice.

  1. Raising a Purchase Order - On the Purchase Type > Purchase Stage form, approvals can be set to be either line or document (entire order or invoice) by using the Transaction Level field. When entering lines on the order, the system processes each line at a time, or groups all the lines together.
  2. The system checks to see if approvals are required for this order/invoice.

    The process is as follows:

    • Find the purchase transaction type on the purchase order/invoice header.

    • Find any approval tables set on the purchase transaction type.

    • On the approval table, compare the order/invoice to the approval table detail lines to see if it matches any criteria.
  3. If the criteria for an approval table line is met, the following is applied to the line/document:
    • Set the line status to Held.
    • Set the line approval status to Not Approved.

    • Approval stamp record is created. This details what approvals are required to release the line.

    Note: This is a table that the system creates and maintains as the order/invoice is approved.
  4. Approve the line/document by going to Purchase Order/Invoice Entry.
    The options in Purchase Order/Invoice Entry are:
    • Approve (if document level approvals are in use).
    • Approve Line (if line level approvals are in use).
    • Approve (if line level approvals are in use and all lines are to be approved).
  5. Use a Control Desk batch program to approve the line(s).
  6. There may be many approvers required to approve the line/document. Each approver is required to approve each line/document as required.
  7. Once all required approvers have approved the line/document, each line approval status is automatically set to Approved. The user must then Release each line to allow the line to progress.

Approval Table Detail Line

When entering an order/invoice, if an approval table is found but no table detail lines criteria are met, the line is held but is not subjected to approvals. The user must then manually release the line.

Within the Approval Table Detail Lines, the DAG codes of up to ten approvers can be specified. The order that they are specified in is the order in which they must be approved in. For example, an Approval Table Detail Line can have:

Limit - 999,999,999

Approver 1 DAG - DAG X

Approver 2 DAG - DAG Y

Approver 3 DAG - DAG Z

The approver in DAG X must approve before the approver in DAG Y can approve. Approvers in DAG X and DAG Y must approve before an approver in DAG Z can approve.

If a line/document is rejected or unapproved, then this line will not be processed. A reason code is required by the approver indicating why the line is being rejected.