Define an Approval Workflow
The sales and purchase document approval system enables users to submit a document, typically a sales order or purchase order, for approval according to a predefined hierarchy of approval managers with specified approval amount limits.
The approvals setup is typically done in cooperation with the accounting manager, the sales person approver that must approve documents, or someone in a similar key role in the company. This manager or other key decision maker defines which documents are relevant to approve and how users should be placed in the approval hierarchy.
In addition to the manager responsible for defining the approval hierarchy, you need to appoint an approval administrator who maintains the approval system and who can:
Have rights above all other users
Add new users
Set substitute users
Connect new documents to approve
View pending approvals for all users
Templates
You can use templates to select which types of sales or purchase documents to include in the approval process. A standard set of templates, for both sales and purchase documents, has been provided for this purpose.
If a particular document requires two different reviewers, you can set up additional approvers. For example, in a small company where the manager or the owner has to approve everything, he can be set as an additional approver.
Notification
The notification system sends e-mail notifications between users and their approvers about documents that need approval. In addition, overdue notifications can be sent by the administrator to be sure all approvers remember to approve their documents.
Delegating Approval
You can assign a substitute approver for times when a primary approver is out of office, so that a process does not get delayed. Since the administrator is responsible for maintaining the document approval system, it is his task to add substitute approvers and ensure that pending notifications are delegated to the substitutes.
With a few exceptions, the overall principles and workflow are the same for both sales and purchase documents.
The following table describes a sequence of tasks, with links to the topics that describe them. These tasks are listed in the order in which they are generally performed.
| To | See |
|---|---|
Determine settings such as the administrator of the approval system, approval deadlines, and whether you want document rejections to be included in a comment note. |
|
Set up the users involved in the approval process. |
|
Set maximum monetary amounts that a user can approve. |
|
Choose the type of document to be included in the approval process. |
|
Define which events (approval, rejection, cancellation, or delegation) should trigger an e-mail to the approvers notifying them that a document is awaiting their approval. |
|
Set up an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server to send e-mail notifications. |
|
Delegate an approval task to a substitute approver. |
|
Appoint additional approvers. |
|
Modify the template that defines the content of notification mails between users in the approval system. |
How to: Modify Mail Templates for Document Approval Notifications |
See Also
Tasks
Walkthrough: Approving Documents