The new approval engine is a powerful and flexible tool. Before getting started with the setup, decide as a company how you want the approval process to work, and build from that plan.

When designing your approval processes, take into consideration:

1. What type of purchases do you currently have? Are they specific to departments, locations or projects?
2. Who needs to sign off on specific types of purchases (e.g. capital assets, legal invoices, etc.) or approve certain expenses?
3. Do you have a minimum threshold for approvals?
4. Will single step approval be sufficient in all cases? Or will some purchases require multi-step approvals?
5. Do you maintain budgets in the system, and do you want budget holders to receive information on the budget spend? 

When it comes to setting up your workflows also think about the composition of your orders and/or invoices.  For example:   

Remember: Every document type = one workflow

Always ensure there is correlation between the documents that require approval and your workflows. Refer to Workflow Scenarios for more examples.

User Types

All Approvers must be set up as system users, including those who are business user type.    

All current non-system approvers using the legacy approval workflow will automatically be converted to system users.  This conversion will be triggered as soon as the Approval Settings is saved. 

User Permissions

To use the features referred to in this article, in the Maintain Menu Profiles screen, assign the following permission to the relevant profiles:

In the Menus tab:

• Approval Settings
• Approvers Listing
• Add/Edit Approvers
• Workflows Listing
• Add/Edit Workflows

In the Reports tab:

• Purchase Order Reprint
• Purchase (Product) Invoice Reprint

These ensure that users will be able to access approval emails.

For more on user profiles, see Create & Manage Users.

For a video tutorial of this process, watch Configuring Workflow Approval Settings (18.1N).

1. Navigate to Setup > Approval Settings.
   
2. Enable approval for the required approval modes.  If you selected both Purchase Order and Purchase Invoice approval, enable Require exact matching if needed. Refer to ‘Approval Modes’ below for more information. 
3. Decide if you want to Re-approve PO Documents from integrated products or Re-approve PI/PN Documents from integrated products. This means that documents that may already have been approved in a third-party system will still enter an approval workflow. If these options are not selected, the document will not enter a workflow regardless of its value. Note, this setting does not apply to AP Inbox or Employee Expenses invoices. 
4. Enter the Workflow Approval Administrator’s email address to notify them of any pending actions on documents needing their attention. 
5. Click Save.

Approval Modes

The approval modes you select impact how your documents progress through workflows. Note that using Purchase Order and Purchase Invoice together (see option 4 below) has a different impact using either individually.

For full details on setting up workflows, see the section ‘Creating Workflows’.

1. Purchase Orders approval (without Purchase Invoice approval)

• Once a PO is approved, you can create and post the matching invoice immediately. 
• Editing the invoice does NOT affect PO approval. 
• Auto-approval and tolerance rules in the PO workflow apply only to the PO and do not affect the invoice. 

2. Non PO Invoice approval (Invoices without PO approval)

• Used for invoices without a Purchase Order (Non PO Invoices), including Employee expenses. 
• Tolerance values can be set to determine whether an increase in value requires reapproval.

3. Purchase Credit Note approval

• Configured like Non PO invoices above.
• Tolerance values can be set to determine whether an increase in value requires reapproval.

4. Purchase Orders + Purchase Invoices (PO & PI together)

What workflows can you create?

• Non PO Invoices (no order) 
• Purchase Orders 
• PO Invoices (invoices linked to approved POs) 

Do PO Invoices always enter their own workflow?

Not always, this depends on PO Invoice value and settings.

• Matching or lower value and/or quantity than the PO: The PO Invoice will be Auto-approved, with no separate workflow needed.
• Higher quantity than the PO: This is not a permitted action. Instead, update the PO and reapprove it first.
• Higher value than the PO: What happens depends on two settings:
  • Approval Settings: Require Exact Matching (ON/OFF) 
  • Purchase Order Workflow settings: Tolerance + Auto-approve setting 

Creating Approvers

For a video tutorial of this process, watch Create and Manage Approvers (18.2N).

1. Navigate to Setup > Approvers and click New Approver. 

2. Select an Approver (approvers must be set up as system users first to appear on the list).
3. Tick the checkbox if the approver is a budget holder. Approvers flagged as Budget Holders will receive a different approval email template containing details of the budget line. If using this option, ensure that workflows are set up based on Dimension Tags and / or Dimension Codes, and that the Codes and / or Tags selected are linked to a Dimension labelled as ‘Budgetary’. See Workflow Scenarios and Dimensions Codes / Tags Setup for further details.

4. Assign a substitute approver if needed. (If you have the correct access levels, you can assign your own substitute.) Substitute approvers approve documents in place of the primary approver during specific dates, such as for annual or sick leave. If the substitute approver does not approve the document within the designated dates, it will need to be re-sent to the original approver for approval. Substitute approvers must be set up as approvers first to appear in the list. Note that if an approver regularly approves documents on behalf of someone else, they should be set up as part of the workflow. 
5. Enable Send approval requests by Email/Mobile if the approver should be notified via email, and/ or via the Mobile app.
6. If applicable, activate if approver can approve their own documents. (There will be a drop down to select a designated approver if the primary approver can approve their own documents.) 
7. Save.     

Restricted Approver View

If an approver approves directly in the system rather than via email, there is a restricted view option. In the Edit Group User screen, check User can only view Purchase Orders/Invoices sent to them for approval. This means that only documents sent for their approval will be visible to that approver. If they are a Business User, they will only see POs awaiting their approval and if they are a Finance User, they will only see POs and PIs.

Managing Approvers

Manage approvers in the Approvers listing grid. Go to Setup > Approvers. 

Refine your search using filters and search fields and export details as an Excel report.

The Actions dropdown lets you manage approvers as follows: 

• Edit: All approver details can be edited except their name and email. 
• Deactivate: Approvers cannot be deleted if any of their associated workflows have been used. Instead, they can be deactivated. To re-activate users, click on this button again.
• Show associated workflows: This will take you to the Workflow screen, showing just the workflows associated with the selected approver. 

Deactivating Approvers

If you are switching approvers for a workflow:

1. Create the new approver as outlined in this section.
2. Swap the old approver for the new in the relevant workflows.
3. In the group layer, unassign the old approver from any entities and then deactivate that user. See Create & Manage Users.

If you have any concerns regarding correct billing, contact support@accountsiq.com to make them aware of the change.

 

Creating Approval Workflows

Workflows are created based on the types of documents your organisation approves, as well as factors such as whether the workflow involves single or multiple departments, requires one or several approvers, involves different hierarchy levels, and any specific conditions or rules tied to the approval of Purchase Orders and/or Invoices.

• Before you begin, refer to the section, “Designing your automated approval process,” for guidance on creating workflows.

Step 1: Enable the Relevant Approval Setting

Before creating a workflow, make sure the corresponding approval process is enabled in Setup > Approval Settings. 

Step 2: Create the Workflow

1. Navigate to Workflows.
2. Click New Workflow.
   
3. Complete the following fields:
   • Workflow: Enter a unique workflow name.
   • Process: Select the type of document the workflow will handle. Only those processes enabled in the Approval Settings screen will be available for selection.
   • Auto-approval: Enable this option if your organisation automatically approves documents up to a specified value and enter that value here.
   • Re-approval rules for edits: If a document is changed after approval, set a tolerance value to define how much it can be edited without needing to go through approval again. Tolerance can be set as a net amount, gross amount, or percentage.
   • Auto-approve invoice within Re-approval tolerance (Purchase Orders process only): Enable this if you want the linked PO Invoice to be auto-approved when it's equal to or below the tolerance set in Re-approval rules for edits. If this is left disabled, the re-approval rules apply to the Purchase Order only, and the linked invoice will go through a separate PO Invoice workflow instead.

Step 3: Set Up Approval Steps

Approval Steps let you create multiple levels of approval and let you add multiple approvers at each level. 

Configuring the steps

1. Click Add a Step to create the first level of approval.
2. Use Approve based on to direct documents to the right approvers according to specific conditions. 
   • Including Conditions: Use as many conditions as needed from the available options. See Approval Workflow Scenarios for more ideas on setup. 
     • For instance, if your approval process requires all department heads to approve their own department's expenses, you could use Dimension Tags or Codes to identify each department assign the relevant approvers. This ensures expenses are routed correctly at every approval level.
   • Omitting Conditions: If the approval level is intended to approve any document of that type, do not apply any conditions.
   • Employee (Non PO Invoices only): This workflow process also includes an 'Employee' condition, letting you build an approval workflow for employee expenses. After selecting an approver, only employees linked to that approver on their Employee expenses account will appear for selection.

3. Select the Approver from the dropdown.

4. Enter the approver's limits or select the “No limit” option. Limits are based on net value; only documents within these limits will be sent to that approver.
5. Select the relevant codes and use the Include or Exclude options to set your conditions. For example, to include all Dimension tags except two, choose Exclude and select those two codes or if the rule applies to only one Dimension tag, choose Include and add that code. Make sure any documents set to be excluded are included in another workflow, so they aren't missed in your approval process.

4. If needed, click Add New to include more approvers at this level.
5. When more than one approver is set up, select the corresponding Decision Mode:
   • All approvers must approve if limits apply: Use this if you want to approve multi-line, multi-departmental documents.
   • Any can approve: Select this only if multiple approvers are linked to the same department.
   • Select when processing the document: Requires users to manually choose an approver when processing the document.
6. When done, click Save.
   
7. If needed, click Add a step to add the next level of approval. Repeat until all required approval levels are set up. If the same approver is assigned to more than one step, you can configure whether their approval or rejection applies to the current step only, or to all steps at once.

Step 4: Save and Activate the Workflow

1. After creating the workflow, click Save. It will appear as a 'Draft' in the Workflow listing.
2. If you're ready to start processing documents through this workflow, click Activate.

Go to Setup > Audit Log. 

Use the Audit Log to investigate any workflow-related issues:

• View when approver records, or workflows have been activated or deactivated.
• View any updates made to approval settings, approver limits, substitutes, workflow steps, and auto-approval rules.
• View a change summary along with user and timestamp details.
• Filter and export grid contents for further analysis.
• Add or Remove columns.

If a document does not get routed successfully to a workflow, it will have the “Admin Required” status. The Approval Workflow Administrator will be notified via email that their attention is required.

For more on other document statuses, see Approve with Approval Workflow.

Causes of the “Admin Required” status

• Multiple workflows: If multiple workflows are found containing the same conditions, flip the rule of the first workflow on its head in the second workflow. For example: the first workflow includes dimension condition: warehouse, and 2nd workflow includes dimension condition: warehouse and supplier: xxx. Therefore, in the first workflow add supplier based on condition and set it to exclude supplier: xxx.
• When no workflow is found. For each approval mode enabled, there needs to be workflows to cover all related scenarios.
• If the document was created before the workflow. In this case, edit the document. This will force it into a new workflow.
• A workflow was edited erroneously. Use the Audit Log as outlined below.

Resolve the “Admin Required” status

• Use the Audit Log to view details of all edits.
• Hover over Notes to view more details of the error. The Approval Workflow administrator must update the workflow accordingly for the document to be processed successfully.
   
• See the Approval Workflow Details Report in the Report Manager. This gives a breakdown of all the settings selected in each workflow: