Who approves a purchase order, and who is told

The organizational unit every order carries, the figure approval limits are judged on, who approves and in what order, what changing an order or a rule does to its approval, and the people copied once it is approved.

An approval rule under Supply Chain → Requisitions & Orders → PO Approval Rules says which purchase orders need approval — from an amount, optionally for one supplier or one organizational unit — and who signs, in one step or level by level. A covered order cannot be received until every signature is in. This guide is about the order itself: what it is judged on, who it goes to, and what happens when it or its rule changes.

Every order has an organizational unit

Organizational unit is a required field on the New purchase order form. It decides which approval rules apply, so an order without one could slip past a rule meant for it — and that can no longer happen.

• It is filled in for you: with the unit chosen in the top bar if one is, and otherwise with your own unit in HRMS. Change it if the order is for another unit.
• It is on Edit from the order’s own page too, to any unit — the company as a whole included.
• An order made any other way gets one as well: a copy, an order raised from a requisition, one ASK creates, and one brought in by an import. No order is ever without a unit.
• An approval rule has its own Organizational unit field, so which unit it covers is written on the rule rather than implied.

A rule for one cost center

A PO approval rule can be limited to one cost center with Only for cost center. It then covers every order charged to that cost center, on the order itself or on any one of its lines, and names its own approver — so the head of the maintenance cost center signs maintenance orders, and nobody else’s.

• Leave Only for cost center empty for a rule that covers every cost center.
• One rule covers one cost center. For two cost centers, make two rules, each with its approver.
• The PO Approval Rules list has a Cost center column, so you can see at a glance which rules are limited and to what.
• ASK can make these rules for you, finding the cost center by its code or its name, and shows the rule for your Confirm before saving it.

An order needs at least one priced line

A purchase order cannot be opened, sent for approval or received until it has at least one line with a quantity and a price. An order with no lines, or only an unpriced one, would be approved at nothing and received as nothing.

• A purchase order made directly — not from a requisition — starts as a draft, with you filled in as the buyer. Add its lines, then press Open.
• The refusal names what is missing, so you know which line to complete.

Approval starts when the order is created

A new purchase order that a rule covers is sent for approval the moment it is saved. There is no separate Submit to remember, and an order no longer sits unrouted because nobody pressed it. The approvers see it in My approvals straight away, and the order’s Approvals panel shows who has it.

The figure approval limits are judged on

The amounts in an approval rule are in the company’s own currency. So an order is judged on its total in the company’s currency — the column now called "Total in company currency (approval limits)", which used to read "In base". An order for EUR 40,000 in a company that keeps its books in dollars is measured in dollars, at the order’s exchange rate.

• The figure is worked out from the lines, each at its own rate. It is never typed: an attempt to type a total on an order that has lines is refused, and the message says to change a line instead.
• The Approvals panel on the order shows the calculation — "Judged against approval limits on" the company-currency total, then the order’s own total and the rate it was converted at — and the order’s organizational unit.
• It changes when the lines, the currency or the exchange rate change, and only then.

Approvals follow the HRMS hierarchy

A rule’s Who approves can name a person, an employee, a position, a role, the cost center’s manager or the reporting line — see Choosing who approves a purchase order or requisition. When it is the reporting line, the approver at each level is the employee HRMS names, and the rule is followed in a fixed order, so the approver is the person the order is really for, not whoever happens to hold a role:

1. The buyer’s reporting line in HRMS: their manager at the first level, their manager’s manager at the second, and so on for as many levels as the rule asks.
2. The person named on the rule, only when the buyer has no reporting line.
3. The role on the rule, only when neither of the first two gives anybody.

Whether that person has a sign-in does not change who the approver is. The reporting line decides it, and an approver is never swapped for somebody else because they cannot sign in yet. Requisitions and hiring requests are approved the same way.

Approvers are named as people

Wherever an approval is shown, the approver is the person, with their position — "Jane Doe, Chief Executive Officer" — rather than a role you then have to look up. That holds on the PO Approvals list, which has Position and Who can act columns, on the Approvals panel of the order itself, and in My approvals.

Where a rule does fall back to a role, it is said as the people holding it: "Chief Executive: Jane Doe (CEO, Head Office)". More than three holders are named as the first three "and N more"; a role nobody holds says so, which is a rule to correct before anybody raises an order under it.

• PO Approval Rules, and the approval levels under a rule, have a Held by column listing who holds each role today.
• HRMS → People → Organization Chart has Show approvers. Press it and everybody who approves purchase orders or requisitions is outlined, with the rule and level they sign at, and the people a rule copies are marked too. The button shows how many approvers there are.

An approver with no sign-in yet

When the employee HRMS names has no sign-in yet, the level waits for them. The screens say so in words — "Jane Doe is the approver HRMS names and has no sign-in yet, so this waits for them" — on the PO Approvals list (in Who can act) and on the order’s Approvals panel.

• Nobody else can decide it in their place: not a holder of the rule’s role, and not the person named on the rule. Only an administrator can.
• The later levels wait behind it, as they would behind any approver who has not decided yet.

1. Give the approver a sign-in, if they have none, under Platform → Access → Users.
2. Link that user on their employee record in HRMS (HRMS → People → Employees, Edit the employee, Signs in as) and save. One sign-in belongs to one current employee record, so a sign-in already linked elsewhere is refused with the name of the record that holds it.
3. The approval appears in their My approvals at once, and they decide it. Nothing needs to be routed again or sent again.

The organizational unit, and changing an order

An order whose organizational unit, supplier, currency, exchange rate or lines change is no longer the order that was approved. So the change routes it again, against what it now is:

• Instead of "Saved." the order says what happened, for example "PO-000123 had been approved, but its business unit changed, so that approval no longer covers it and it has gone back for approval."
• A new currency with no rate given takes the rate on file for it, and the lines that followed the order’s currency follow the new one. A line agreed in a currency of its own keeps it.
• Nothing is lost: the Approvals panel keeps the earlier routing under "Earlier routing — set aside when the document changed or was rejected".

Changing an approval rule

A rule changed today applies today, to every order still waiting for a decision. Change a rule’s approver, its levels, its amount or its organizational unit, or delete it, and every open purchase order still awaiting approval is routed again against the rules as they now stand. You do not need to find those orders or send them again.

• The requests the old rule had made are not deleted. They stay in the order’s approval history, marked "Withdrawn: the approval rule" with the rule’s name and "changed".
• Orders the rule now covers, and did not before, are sent for approval.
• Orders already approved stay approved. The change does not reach back to a decision already made.
• The message when you save the rule lists the orders that were routed again.
• Nothing is copied: the orders are the same orders, routed afresh.

A copy is judged like a new order

Copying a purchase order — or a requisition, quotation, sales order or invoice — works out every line and the total in the company’s currency exactly as a new document would. So a copy goes to the same approvers the original would, rather than slipping under a limit on a total of 0.

Who is told when it is approved

Each approval rule has a Copy on approval list: the people told when an order under that rule is approved, and why. It is how the requester’s manager, Finance, the unit the goods are for or the supplier hear that the order may go ahead.

• Why they are copied is written beside each ("Pays the invoice") and printed next to their name on the order and in the message.
• Before the order is approved, its Approvals panel lists who will be copied when it is. After, it lists who was copied, when, and whether the message was sent, held or suppressed.
• A copy tells; it asks nobody to sign and gives nobody access to the order.