Approvals Overview
The approval module is immensely powerful and can enable your large customers to manage their procurement in a way only previously available in expensive ERP or Procurement systems.
With approval controls you can allow users within accounts to approve or reject orders from other users. You can even provide budgets for how much individuals can spend before their purchases go for approval and much more.
👍 Quick setup guide: Click here if you want to see a quick setup guide.
Feature Highlights
Requester control features
Budgets (Daily, weekly, or custom) - Give users budgets for how much they can spend before orders are sent for approval
Allow only on contract items to be purchased, all other items must be approved
Allow only items in quick lists to be purchased, all other items must be approved
Maximum product price. All products over $100 require approval
Maximum order total. All orders over $200 require approval
Force all orders to go to approval
Select multiple approvers. Both Jane and Bob can approve Jill’s orders
Approver control Features
Allow some users to approve other User's purchases
Give Users budget when they are purchasing and a different budget when they are approving orders
Maximum Order Line Value - Don't allow Andy Test 1 to place an order line value that is above this amount
Minimum Order Value - Don't allow Andy Test 1 to place an order that is below this amount
Maximum Order Value - Don't allow Andy Test 1 to place an order that is above this amount
Approver On Leave - Send orders for approval to another user when this user is on leave.
Allow this user to edit orders that require approval (Super Approver)
Multi-tier approvals. For example, Jills orders are approved by Bill. Bill’s orders are approved by Jane, etc. (Executive Approvers)
Create budgets for how much a user can approve for a daily, weekly, monthly, or custom date range.
Send Approvers Order Confirmation Emails: Toggle on the ability to send the approver the order confirmation email, after they approve or edit an order.
Approval Definitions
Requester - The user that needs an order approved. Any user can be setup to have any other user approver their orders.
Approver - This is a standard approver.
You can Approve or Reject orders.
You cannot edit orders unless you are a super approver
Super Approvers- This is a standard approver that can also edit orders. They can Approve or Reject. They can also edit orders
⚠️ You cannot edit credit card orders
You can edit orders on account
You can edit an order and then checkout
You can can edit an order and then simply approve the order
⚠️ Enforce PO does not force a super approver to enter a PO
Executive approver - This is a standard approver that can also approve other approvers orders
You can Approve Order
You can Can Approve or Reject
You can Edit Order
You cannot edit orders unless you are a super approver
Rules and Logic
Creating Budgets and Timings
You can only have one budget in a time frame. You cannot overlap budget dates
Note: When using budgets ahead of time, for example setting budgets for the coming months, it is important the use the type of 'custom date range'
E.g. You can have a weekly budget but you can’t have a daily and weekly budget.
The budgets are based on whole days and don’t take into account hours
12:01am-12am
E.g. if an order is put through at 5am for $40. Then at 9am a budget is created for $50 per day. Then at 10am an order is put through for $11, The budget will be breached for that day.
Budget amounts are judged on subtotals only. So the budget doesn’t include VAT, Delivery, Payment surcharges, or Delivery surcharges, etc.
What about discounts - Budgets are judged on “subtotal with discount applied”
E.g. If you have a basket subtotal of $25 and you give a discount of $5 off the subtotal. When the user checks out the budget will be reduced by $20, as this is the subtotal with discounts applied.
Approver budgets vs User budgets
Any user can be both a requester and an Approver. Thus, any user can have 2 different budgets. One budget for when they purchase items and a separate budget for when they approve other users’ purchase.
Breaching a budget
You breach a budget when you hit or go over that amount
If budget is $50 and your subtotal is $49.99, the order will go through.
If the order subtotal is $50, the order will have breached the budget and will be sent for approval.
Budgets are calculated by the following
Budget amount - ( all Actual spend + all Pending spend )
If the sum is "0" or below, then the budget has been breached
Approval Workflow Email Templates
Order Requires Approval
This is sent to the user who placed the order that requires approval
Order Approval
This is sent to all approvers selected as an approver for a requester
If an approver is not selected or the order is beyond any of the approvers settings of all of the approvers this email is sent to the Account Admin set for the account.
If an Executive Approver is selected, once the previous approver has approved the order, the executive approver will receive this email template.
Order Not Approved
This is sent only to the requester who's order was rejected