Approval Workflow

The Procurement application automatically checks submitted Shopping Carts, Blanket Orders, Blanket Order Releases and Online Forms, using:

• The buyer's User Profile,
• The rules of the buyer's Buying Organization,
• The Blanket Order Details and authorizations, or
• The workflow rules and approval responsibilities for the Online Form.

It then:

• Creates Orders for valid Shopping Carts, and dispatches them to the selected suppliers, and
• Routes Shopping Carts that require attention to an Approver page for resolution, or
• Routes the Online to the appropriate Approver / Approval Group and internal department for the requested action.

The most common reasons that Shopping Carts are routed to an Approver are:

• A Non-sourced Special Request item for which no supplier (or a non-authorized supplier) is specified is included in the Shopping Cart,
• The dollar total for the Shopping Cart exceeds the Spending Limit for the submitting user, or
• An Approval-flagged Commodity is included which requires approval regardless of the buyer's Spending Limit.
• The submitting user is not authorized to create an Order (i.e. has a Spending Limit or zero.)

After submission, but before all workflow processes have been completed, the buyer or any approver may make further changes to the Shopping Cart contents, by:

• Changing quantities of items,
• Selecting alternative items, or
• Selecting an item from the catalog to meet a buyer's Special Request.

When this happens, an new version of the workflow routing is automatically created, so that:

• New approval steps are added, and
• Completed workflow steps can be repeated for changed items or quantities.