How Purchase Order Approval Is Processed

Document approval electronically routes the purchase order to all identified approvers and records their approval actions. It determines the routing using a rules engine which is configured to accommodate your organization's unique business requirements.

Approvers can then review the document details, add comments, and add attachments before approving, rejecting, or routing the document to additional approvers.

This figure shows a simplified document approval flow you might take as a document approver:Review the approval request details and action history. You can also add approvers and comments, if needed.Request additional information, if needed.Determine the approval action to take. You can approve, reject or reassign the approval request.Based on your approval action, the approval outcome for the purchase order can be to: Continue through the approval process to other approvers. Return a rejected approval request to the initiator.Return the approval request to review by reassignment to another approver.Once approved by all approvers, the document can be dispatched by communication to the supplier.

Setup for Purchase Order Approval

You perform setup for purchase order approval in the Setup and Maintenance work area, Procurement offering, Approval Management functional area. Use the Manage Purchasing Document Approvals task.

How Purchase Order Approval Is Processed

Using the rules engine, the original purchase order or change order is routed to appropriate approvers for their approval.

Routing rules can be based on multiple document attributes, including:

• Header: Document Type, Creation Method, Contract Attributes, Amount

• Line: Category, Amount

• Schedule: Requested Delivery Date, Ship-to Organization, Destination Type, Amount

• Distribution: Requester, Project, Cost Center, Amount

• Backing Requisition: Requester, Difference from Requisition Amount

The rules engine enables you freedom of choice over how approval takes place:

• Multiple Stages: Category, Terms, Requisitions, Accounts and Projects

  Approval stages are used to create rules based on the different sets of document attributes. In addition, stages help you organize the approval rules. For example, all rules pertaining to commercial or legal terms can be authored in the terms stage.

• Voting Regimes

  If approvals are sought in parallel these are used to determine if all, only a specified percentage, or only the first of the approvers need to approve. However, only First Responder Wins is currently supported.

• Approval Groups

  Set of approvers to whom the approval request needs to be sent. For example, a group of category managers approving all or specific category purchases.

• Participant Types

  There are four participant types: Serial, Parallel, Single, and FYI.

This table provides several examples of approval routing rules based on a condition and action.

Condition	Action
Purchase order amount exceeds a certain threshold	Route to procurement agent's manager
Purchase order amount is greater than backing requisition amount	Route to requester's manager
Non-standard contract terms	Route for legal approval
Line's category name is "Travel"	Route for travel approval