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Defining approval rules and roles

Orders and invoices may be subject to an approval procedure in Impact Ordering in order to monitor and control spending. The approval procedure is controlled by approval rules that can be defined by company administrators. Approval rules also control whether orders and invoices are subject to accounting checks. If an approval rule applies to an order or invoice, the order or invoice is automatically presented to the users specified as approvers in the approval rule. The approvers can accept or reject the entire order or invoice or individual items.

What is an approval rule?

An approval rule determines whether an order must be approved before it is sent to the supplier or whether an invoice must be approved before it is paid.

An approval rule specifies the conditions under which approval is necessary. For example, when goods are ordered for a specific project or cost centre, the project or cost centre manager may have to approve requests for these goods. Price or budget limits may also determine whether approval is necessary. For example, when a request exceeds a specific price or budget, it may have to be approved.

An approval rule also specifies which users will approve the orders or invoices or perform accounting checks. Any number of approvers and accounting checkers can be specified for an approval rule.

Approval rules may also specify that no approval is required or that orders and invoices should be automatically rejected.

Various types of approval rules are available for different situations. See Rule types for information about the different types of approval rules.

Rule sets

Approval rules are grouped in a rule set. Rules sets can be created for specific companies or the standard, global rule set can be used. The global rule set is valid for all companies for which a company-specific rule set has not been defined. A rule set that is assigned to a specific company is only valid for this company. To assign a rule set to a specific company, you must select the name in the rule set and activate the option Use own rule set in the company profile (Master data tab - Attributes section). Company administrators who are assigned to a specific company can only create and edit rule sets for that company.

Note: A subsidiary company does not inherit the rule set that has been assigned to its parent company. If no rule set is defined for a subsidiary company, the global rule set applies for this company.

Approval roles

You do not have to assign a specific user to an approval rule. You can create an approval role and assign the approval role to the approval rule instead of assigning individual users. This makes it possible to change the approvers without having to change the approval rule.

You can also use contact and user categories to categorise contact persons, for example, business contact person and technical contact person.

Defining approval rules

When creating approval rules, think about what should happen when a request is submitted or an invoice is issued. Is approval always necessary or can some orders and invoices be processed without approval? If approval is necessary, under which circumstances is it necessary and who should be responsible for approval? Consider also the consequences if no approval rule is found for an order or an invoice.

• If no approval rules are defined, all orders and invoices are processed without approval. For most companies, this situation will not be desirable and it will be necessary to define approval rules.
• If no approval rule is found that applies to an order or invoice, the order or invoice is processed without approval.
• Is approval necessary? For small quantities of low value goods, for example, you may want to apply the rule No approval necessary, since the administrative cost of the approval process would be greater than the cost of the goods.
• Under which circumstances is approval required? The answer to this question will determine which type of approval rule you create. For example:
  • To control costs for a specific project, define a basket rule for the project and specify that all goods ordered for this project require approval by the project manager.
  • To control costs for a specific type of product, create a product rule (for example, approval is required for products ordered from a specific user catalog) or a product attribute rule (for example, approval is required for hazardous goods).
  • To control the payment of invoices, create an invoice rule and specify that all invoices over a specific amount must be approved before being released for payment.

  See Rule types for information about the different types of approval rules.

• Who should approve the order or invoice? You can assign several approvers, but remember that a complex approval procedure with many approvers can slow down order or invoice processing and thus negate the benefits of an electronic procurement system.
• If no valid approver is found for an approval rule, the orders and invoices affected by the rule are processed without approval.
• If several rules apply to an order or invoice, the approvers specified in all rules must approve the order or invoice.

Priorities

You must specify a priority for basket rules and invoice rules. You can select from a total of five priority levels between Low and Maximum. Priorities determine which rules will be applied if several rules for the order or invoice exist. Priorities are processed using one of two methods, depending on how your system is configured:

• Method 1: Only conditions with the highest priority are considered, regardless of the object to which the rule applies.
• Method 2: Conditions with the highest priority are considered for each object to which they apply.

The following example illustrates the difference between the two methods.

The system has found six rules that apply to an order. Two of these rules apply to a specific company, two rules apply because the user has selected a specific cost centre in his basket, and two rules apply because the user has selected a specific project in his basket.

Method 1:

Only conditions with the highest priority are considered, regardless of the object to which the rule applies. With this method, only rule 5 is applied, because it is the only rule with the priority High. All other rules are ignored.

Rule	Applies to	Priority
Rule 1	Company	Normal
Rule 2	Company	Low
Rule 3	Cost centre	Low
Rule 4	Cost centre	Normal
Rule 5	Project	High
Rule 6	Project	Normal

Method 2:

Conditions with the highest priority are considered for each object to which they apply. With this method, each object (company, cost centre and project) is considered individually and the highest priority for each object is applied. Thus, rules 1, 4 and 5 apply and rules 2, 3 and 6 are ignored.

Rule	Applies to	Priority
Rule 1	Company	Normal
Rule 2	Company	Low
Rule 3	Cost centre	Low
Rule 4	Cost centre	Normal
Rule 5	Project	High
Rule 6	Project	Normal

Exception:

An approval rule that is defined for an individual user always overrides an approval rule that is defined for the user’s company. The rule defined for the company is always ignored, regardless of the established priorities.

Note: If several rules with the same priority exist, all are applied.

See also Roles and rights Standard authorization sets User management pages Creating and editing users Creating contact persons Enabling users to register themselves in the system Disabling user access Managing deputies Creating and editing user groups Creating and editing role sets Defining responsibilities