5. Approving orders¶
Module
Part of Sales & Pricing and Purchasing & Suppliers. If your plan does not include it, these screens are not in your menus.
This chapter is for approvers. Approval is currently restricted to the Administrator role.
The queue¶
Approvals → Approval Queue. Every purchase order and sales order waiting for a decision, with:
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Document | The order number. Clicking it opens the audit trail, not the order. |
| Type | Purchase or Sales |
| Party | The customer or supplier |
| Requested by | Who raised it, and their role |
| Total | The value |
| Flags | Warnings you should read before deciding — see below |
Use the Type filter to work through purchases and sales separately. Refresh re-reads the queue.
Flags¶
An orange over credit limit flag means this customer's outstanding balance plus this order goes past the credit limit on their record. The order was still allowed to be entered; this queue is where it is caught. Approving it is a decision, not an oversight.
Approving or rejecting¶
- Read the flags column.
- To see how the document got here, click its number — an audit trail opens underneath showing every action taken on it, by whom, and when.
- Type a note in the note box if you want a reason on the record. It is optional.
- Click Approve or Reject.
Watch out
There is no "are you sure?" — one click decides, and the row disappears from the queue. A rejected order can never be fulfilled or received.
An order approved by the same person who raised it is marked self-approved in the audit trail. That is not blocked, but it is visible.
Approval limits¶
Approvals → Approval Limits. This is where the policy is set: how much a given role may clear by itself, per document type.
A limit of 0 means everything of that type goes to the queue. Every role is currently set to 0, which is why nothing self-clears. Raising a limit lets that role approve its own documents up to that value; anything above still comes here.
Only the Administrator role can change these.
Changing a document after it is approved¶
If you edit the figures on an approved document, the approval is withdrawn automatically and the document goes back to the queue. The screen warns you before you save, and tells you afterwards that it happened.
This is deliberate: the approval was given for the numbers that were there at the time, not the ones you just typed.