16. Approval Process

The approval process controls the flow of requisitions, orders and change orders through PECOS P2P prior to purchase order transmission. It determines when and to whom documents are routed for approval based on defined rules that are applied to all documents after they are submitted by a user. Invoices received can also be routed for approval as part of the settlement process, prior to being transferred to your finance system for payment. The approval plan is also referred to as the Workflow and may be considered synonymous within this section.

The Approval Process is one of the most powerful and versatile features of the PECOS P2P. As an administrator you are able to define the Approval Roles to be used in your plans, define workflow processes within Approval Plans and finally assign approval plans to users and determine which users are to fill the approval roles within Approval Rule Groups.

The following sections explain more fully the importance, options and steps involved in creating Roles, Approval Plans and Approval Rule Groups. The graphic below describes the relationship between each configuration step:

There are four basic types of document approval routing for which approval plan types are available and the following sections explain the different processing steps involved in the different document approval scenarios:

• Approval of Requisitions
• Approval of Purchase Orders (Order Requests)
• Approval of Change Orders
• Approval of Invoices
  Requisition Approval
  Purchase Order Approval
  Requisition and Order Approval
  Change Order Approval
  Invoice Approval

The workflow configuration to ensure compliance to ordering and invoicing processes

• Approval Roles
• Approval Plans
• Approval Rule Groups

Monitoring approval task queues and hanging Approvers

• Approval Reassignment