Approvals

To enforce compliance, businesses need control over what is being purchased by their employees. Order.co offers approvals before an order is submitted to vendors. This allows businesses to see exactly what is being purchased and control rogue spend proactively. This also removes the need for finance teams to seek approval for paying invoices. Build a custom approval workflow that fits any compliance policy!

Creating Approval Rules

To get started, open the Approvals tab.

Here you can edit existing rules by clicking the rule name, or create a new Approval Rule by clicking Create approval rule. Follow the steps below to finish building your rule.

1. Select one or more approvers for Step 1 of this rule. Click Add after each selection.
2. Choose which condition you would like to add to Step 1 of the rule (see below for full details)
   1. When is the condtion type to be used.
   2. Is allows you choose between Including or Excluding a list of values, or greater or less than a subtotal
   3. What is the list of values to use for this condition. Click Add to keep adding values to the list.
3. To add another condition to Step one, click the When selector and pick a new condition. You can add as many conditions as you need!
   1. Use the And/Or toggle to determine if your all conditions are required for the rule to be applied, or only one of each conditions.
4. Click Add approval step to add a second step. Follow the instructions above to create your new step. You can create as many steps as you need!
5. Click More actions to rename the approval rule. Ex. "Region 3 Approvals", "Capex Approvals", etc.
6. Click Save changes to publish the rule, or leave the page to save as a draft. 

Once you save the rule, all new orders will be evaluated for matching conditions. 

Tips for creating Approval Rules

• To be an approver, a user must have a role with the "Approve Orders" permission.
• The conditions in Step 1 of a rule must be met before Step 2 can be applied to an order.
• When creating additional steps, remember that the previous steps apply to each subsequent step. So there's no need to duplicate conditions across additional steps.
• You can add as many approvers to each step as you would like. Each of them will receive a notification to approve, but only one approval is required for each step.
• If you have a step that is copied across all of your rules, such as a high order total requiring an additional approval, consider creating a separate rule for that condition. That makes it easier for you to create rules, and speeds up order approval for your users!
• Since approvals will hold an order until all approval steps have been satisfied, consider keeping your rules simple to avoid delays in fulfilling orders. If you want some help optimizing your approvals, ask your Account Manager or Implementation Consultant. 

Approval Conditions

Use our custom approval conditions to build complex workflows that match your compliance policies! Here's a breakdown of each condition and how it applies to orders:

• User
  • References the user that created the order
  • You can use the comparators One of or Not one of to create a list of users to include or exclude for this condition
  • Tip: Use User is Not one of  to exclude users that aren't required to have their orders approved, such as administrators or superusers
• Location
  • References the Location assigned to the order
  • You can use the comparators One of or Not one of to create a list of locations to include or exclude for this condition
  • Tip: Use the Location condition to build regional approval rules
• Cost Center
  • References the Cost Center assigned to the order
  • You can use the comparators One of or Not one of to create a list of cost centers to include or exclude for this condition
  • Tip: Use the Cost Center condition to build departmental approval rules
• Accounting Code
  • References any accounting code applied to any product on the order
  • You can use the comparators One of or Not one of to create a list of codes to include or exclude for this condition
• Subtotal
  • References the order subtotal (before shipping and taxes are applied)
  • You can use the comparators Greater than or less than to create a list of codes to include or exclude for this condition
  • Tip: Use Subtotal condition to route high cost orders to upper management teams for approval
• NEW: Budget
  • References the budget(s) for User, Location, or Cost Center assigned to the order. This condition does not reference allocated budgets at this time.
  • This condition has one comparator, Over Limit.
  • This condition will trigger if any associated budget is already over the set limit, or if the order will cause the budget limit to be exceeded. 

How Approvals Work

Submitting an order

When an order is submitted it is evaluated against all approval rules to determine if any apply. 

• The conditions in Step 1 of a rule must be met for an approval rule to be applied to an order.
• If the conditions for Step 2 are also met by the order, it will be applied as well.
• Multiple rules can be applied to the same order, if the conditions for each first step are met.

The order will be held in an "Approval Required" status until it has been fully approved, rejected or canceled. Users can see what rules have been applied, the conditions that triggered the approval, and what users need to approve the order before it can be fulfilled. 

Approvers are notified an order is ready for review

As soon as the order is submitted, each of the approvers for Step 1 on any applied approval rules will receive a notification email. If an approver does not approve or reject an order within 2 days, they will receive a reminder email. Reminder emails will continue until the approval is resolved or the order is canceled.

You can use the approval email to quickly review the details of the order and make a decision. Details include:

• The approval rules that triggered this approval
• The user, location, and cost center assigned to the order
• A list of the products contained within the order
• The estimated total (before tax and shipping)
• Any impacted budgets, including what the remaining budget will be after the order is completed

Approval Recommendations - Powered by Order.co AI!

Order.co uses a powerful AI tool to make approval recommendations. Using order history for the assigned location, our AI reviews each order and identifies anomolies such as unusual product quantities, unexpected price changes, or off-cadence orders. If an order doesn't follow the purchasing pattern, it will suggest that you review the order before making a decision. 

Approvers will also see a notification on their dashboards to review and approve an order. 

Approving or Rejecting an Order

Approvers can approve or reject orders in a variety of ways:

• They can approve directly in their inbox using the Approval email
• They can approve from their dashboard
• They can approve from the My Orders page
• They can open the Order detail page to review and approve. 

Once an order is approved, the order will move to fulfillment and the ordering user will be notified. If an approval rule has more that one approval step, the approvers in the next step will be notified and be required to approve the order. 

Rejecting an order will prompt approvers to enter a rejection reason, which will be shown on the order page and sent back to the user that created the order.

If an order is edited by any user, the approval rules will reset and require approval for all steps again. Editing an order will also allow you to move the order to the latest version of your approval rules. 

Approval Overrides

If an approver is not available to review and approve an order, users with special permissions can override the approvals to move an order to fulfillment. Learn more about that here. 

Approval Reports

Order.co let's you explore what rules you have in place, and how they are performing on the Insights page! There, you can export reports about average approval times, what orders still need to be approved, and more. Learn more about that here.