Use the Assign Approval Groups window to associate approval groups with a specific job or position and a document type including: Purchase Requisition, Internal Requisition, Standard Purchase Order, Planned Purchase Order, Blanket Purchase Agreement, Contract Purchase Agreement, Scheduled Release, and Blanket Release. You can associate multiple approval groups with a single document type/job or position combination. Whenever you associate two or more approval groups with a single document type/job or position combination, Purchasing uses the most restrictive rule to evaluate authorization limits.
Attention: While individual approval groups do not require an enabling Account Range Include rule, every document type for each job/position must be associated with at least one approval group with this characteristic. Otherwise, employees in the associated job or position will be unable to approve this document type.
If no approval groups are associated with a particular document type for a given job or position, then employees assigned to this job or position will be unable to approve documents of this type.
Example
If you want to specify the approval assignments for the Purchasing department described in the Defining Approval Authorization Rules document (See: Defining Approval Authorization Rules), you can begin with the Senior Buyer position. Assuming Senior Buyers should be able to approve all document types, you can set up the control assignments as follows:
| Control Function | Approval Group | Start Date |
|---|---|---|
| Blanket Purchase Agreement | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Blanket Release | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Contract Purchase Agreement | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Internal Requisition | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Planned Purchase Order | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Purchase Requisition | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Scheduled Release | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Standard Purchase Order | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
This plan allows Senior Buyers to approve all document types for all account ranges with a maximum amount limit of $50,000. The Senior Buyer position can approve all locations, items, and item categories by default.
If Junior Buyers can approve releases (and no other document types) based on the authorization criteria you specified in the Defining Approval Authorization Rules document, set up the Control Assignments as follows for this position:
| Control Function | Control Group | Start Date |
|---|---|---|
| Blanket Release | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Blanket Release | Junior Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
| Scheduled Release | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Scheduled Release | Junior Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
In this case, Junior Buyers can approve up to $25,000 for each Blanket and Scheduled Release including all but one category of manufacturing items. These employees cannot approve Standard Purchase Orders, Planned Purchase Orders, Purchase Requisitions, Internal Requisitions, Blanket Purchase Agreements, or Contract Purchase Agreements regardless of document total or content. Finally, Junior Buyers are unable to approve any document type that includes MRO item categories.
Attention: Note that we assigned two approval groups to each document type in this example. The Buyer Master approval group lets Junior Buyers approve releases by providing an enabling Account Range Include rule. The Junior Buyer approval group introduces the specific authorization restrictions for this position. Remember, the most restrictive rules prevail at approval time, so even though the Buyer Master Account Range Include rule allows for a $50,000 Amount Limit, the Junior Buyer Document Total rule with a $25,000 Amount Limit controls the approval ceiling.
MRO Buyers should be able to approve any document type for up to $10,000 of MRO item categories. Set up the approval assignments as follows:
| Control Function | Approval Group | Start Date |
|---|---|---|
| Blanket Purchase Agreement | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Blanket Purchase Agreement | MRO Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
| Blanket Release | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Blanket Release | MRO Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
| Contract Purchase Agreement | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Contract Purchase Agreement | MRO Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
| Internal Requisition | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Internal Requisition | MRO Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
| Planned Purchase Order | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Planned Purchase Order | MRO Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
| Purchase Requisition | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Purchase Requisition | MRO Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
| Scheduled Release | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Scheduled Release | MRO Buyer | dd-MON-yy |
| Standard Purchase Order | Buyer Master | dd-MON-yy |
| Standard Purchase Order | MRO Buyer | dd-MON-yy |