Approvals Configuration Overview

Use Approvals Configuration to set up and configure approval workflows that allow you to use an approval process for Purchasing and Inventory applications.

You set up individual approval workflows for purchase requisitions, request for price quotes, purchase orders, change orders, release orders, and inventory item requests.

Approval workflows identify the steps in the approval process, the employees assigned to approve a record for each step, and the notification alerts to send for each step to keep the approval process on schedule.

You can create simple approval steps or more complex, multitiered conditional steps for approval workflows. For example, if a purchase order is over a certain monetary amount, you can have it routed to different approvers than if it were under a certain monetary amount.

You set up notification alerts for approval steps to be delivered by email or dashboard. The alerts let employees know when a record is ready for their review, when it is past due, when it is approved, and so on.

You set up and configure approval workflows for an application in Configuration > Approvals > Approvals Configuration. This configuration is at the Vision system level, so if you have multiple companies in Vision, you create the workflows for all your companies here. Or, you can create an approval workflow to be used by all companies.

Other Configuration for Approval Workflows

Enable Approvals and Assign the Approval Workflows to Use

You turn on the use of approval workflows individually for purchase requisitions, request for price quotes, and purchase orders. You specify these approval workflows on the General tab in Configuration > Purchasing & Inventory > Company Settings.

Inventory item requests are required to go through an approval process. You specify these approval workflows on the Inventory tab in Configuration > Purchasing & Inventory > Company Settings.

Set Up Approval Roles at the Organization Level

If you use organizations in Vision, you can set up approval roles at the organization level and assign an employee to the roles in Organization Configuration. These roles can be assigned as approvers for approval workflow steps. For example, you may want purchasing records to be approved by an administrator at the organization level in addition to, or instead of, a project manager.

User-Initiated Workflows and Scheduled Workflows Configuration

All the approval workflows that you enter and save in Approvals Configuration are copied automatically to User Initiated Workflows Configuration and Scheduled Workflows Configuration. Here you can view the steps in more detail for troubleshooting purposes. You can also add advanced actions—such as stored procedures, functions, custom methods, and web services—to the approval workflow steps.