Purchase Order Approvals (Business Rules)
e•silentpartner provides the ability to create Purchase Order approval process – PO business rules- which determine if a PO is automatically approved or needs to be routed for approval, based upon type of job or resource, and a dollar value range.
If you decide to establish approval routes, the first step is to set up the type: by Company/Job Type or by Company/Placed by.
Under GL > Setup > Company > Options > Preferences you can set up the following:
- PO Admin: a General PO Approver; in the event of one or more of the approvers in the approval process absence, the Admin Approver can Open a PO, canceling the approval process route.
- You can also establish if you want to Set Business Rules based on ‘Job Type’ or ‘Placed By’, and if you want to create only One Job per PO.
- ‘Job Type’ will allow you to create PO Approval routes based on Job type (Billable, Non-billable, or Internal)
- ‘Placed By’ will allow you to create PO Approval routes based on user.
- If you choose this last option, you will be able to set roles as part of the approval process, instead of specific users, like ‘Account Executive’ or
‘Project Manager’ assigned in a job. - Please note that this option will only apply an Approval process for those users for whom a rule exists.
- If you choose this last option, you will be able to set roles as part of the approval process, instead of specific users, like ‘Account Executive’ or
To set up PO approval rules, go to PO > Admin > Business Rules where you will be presented with a window such as this:
Within this window, you can define what company you desire to establish an approval process for, who the PO approvers will be in each specific amount range –up to 15-, defined with minimum and maximum amounts for which they have approval authority.
You will need to click the green plus icon to start setting up one approval process. A new window will present you with the necessary information to initiate a new approval route. Set minimum and maximum amounts, and establish the approval process.
Once a PO falls into one of these approval routes, the system will send email notifications from approver to approver, following the route, to obtain individual approvals. Additionally, the PO initiator will receive notifications as approvers are notified with the overall approval ‘History’ reviewable from the PO. Only once the final approval is obtained, the PO status will change from REQ to OPEN. If one of the approvers rejects the PO, then it will go back to the user who originally requested the approval for the proper changes, and the process will start over. Any of the approval routes can be modified and edited if needed.
The PO Business Rules can only be changed at a company level if there are no business rules created.