Purchasing lets you route documents for approval based on either position hierarchies or employee/supervisor relationships. In both cases, you control whether documents are routed to the first employee with enough authority to approve the document (Direct method), or if they must pass through each level of the associated hierarchy or reporting infrastructure regardless of authority (Hierarchy method). You can also control whether document owners are able to approve the documents they create.
Use the Document Types window to specify routing controls by document type. See: Defining Document Types.
Prevent or allow document owners to approve the documents they create.
Prevent or allow changes to the default forward-to employee.
If you are using position approval hierarchies and there is more than one employee associated with a particular position, Purchasing defaults a Forward-To employee in the Approvals window based on alphabetic order.
If you are using position approval hierarchies and allow changes to the Forward-To employee, the list of values in the Approvals window includes all employees in the selected hierarchy.
If you are routing documents using employee/supervisor relationships and you allow changes to the Forward-To employee, the list of values in the Approvals window includes all employees defined in the Business Group you specify in the Financials Options window.
Prevent or allow changes to the default forward-from employee. This control applies only to requisitions.
If you allow changes to the forward-from employee, Purchasing restricts the Forward-From list of values in the Approvals window to requestors associated with the requisition you are trying to approve.
This flexibility allows you to build an approval history including the original requestor rather than the preparer.
This control applies only if you are using position approval hierarchies. Prevent or allow changes to the default approval hierarchy.
If you allow changes to the default approval hierarchy, the list of values in the Approvals window includes all hierarchies defined in the Business Group you specify in the Financials Options window.
Attention: When you submit a document for approval, Purchasing verifies that you are included in the default position hierarchy for your document. If you are not included in this hierarchy, and Allow Change to Approval Hierarchy is set to No, you cannot approve the document or route it to another employee.
Select Direct to route documents to the first employee with enough authority to approve them. Select Hierarchy to route documents to the next person in the approval hierarchy or reporting infrastructure regardless of authority.
Approval authority is determined by the approval rules you define in the Define Approval Groups and Assign Approval Groups windows. For example, a hierarchy of three approvers consists of one with a $1,000 approval limit, one with a $5,000 approval limit, and one with a $10,000 approval limit. In a Direct forward method, a document totalling $7,000 is routed directly to the approver with the $10,000 approval limit. In a Hierarchy forward method, the document routes to all three approvers, stopping at the $10,000 approver.
This control applies only if you are using position approval hierarchies. You must specify a default approval hierarchy for each document type.
Combine these controls to build an approval routing policy that is as strict or as flexible as your needs warrant. For example, if you set Allow Change to Approval Hierarchy and Allow Change to Forward-To to No, Purchasing forces employees to route all documents according to the approval hierarchy or employee / supervisor relationships that you define. If you set these controls to Yes, Employees can route documents for approval with a high degree of autonomy and flexibility within the structures you define.