Approval Route

Shopping Carts may be routed through the approval chain in several ways: Serial Approvals are sequential, following a route defined by the designated approvers, spending and approval limits specified in the various buyers' and approvers' User Profiles.

Note: Approvers may be an individual approver or a member of an approval group.

This pre-defined routing can be extended by the adding of ad-hoc approvers and reviewers before or during the approval process.

Parallel

Approvals associated with different rules (i.e., workflow triggers) are routed in parallel. For example, a Shopping Cart for a commodity, and for an amount in excess of the user's spending limit, may require approval by both a commodity manager and a supervisor. Instead of requiring approval first by the commodity manager, and next by the supervisor, the parallel route enables both to occur at the same time.

Ad-Hoc

Approvals may be done by approvers who are added by users or other approvers to the pre-defined serial routing that is created by the Procurement application:

• Buyers can add approvers before the Shopping Cart is submitted to the workflow.
• Approvers can add other approvers while Shopping Carts are in their in-boxes awaiting approval, either in parallel with other approvers in the chain, or at the end of the chain before the Shopping Cart becomes an Order.
• Approvals that are stalled in the approval process because an approver has not addressed them may be automatically escalated to the supervisor of that approver after a certain number of days. The number of days in the period can be configured through the Procurement application Administrator.
• Multiple reviewers may be added on an ad hoc basis in the approval chain, either by users or approvers while the Shopping Carts are awaiting approval. Those who are included in the approval workflow as reviewers are not involved in the process as an approver.