Layering Purchase Order Approval Workflow
Answered
I am working with the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center on some issues they're experiencing with Purchase Order Approvals.
The goal here is to allow all users to at least enter a PO for approval (Employee Completed level), but some also need to approve at other stages. They had no “level from” restrictions in place before and that was causing an issue of approvers skipping levels (an Executive Approval went through before the Accountant Approval, so a PO went through without Accounting seeing).
Here's a user example: Danell needs to be able to submit POs for approval at the level 1 stage (Employee Completed). Then, she shouldn't be able to approve the PO again until after the Manager approves. Once she approves at the Accountant Approval level, she shouldn't be able to make any further approvals. Their configuration is below. We also tried Level From: Accountant Approval / Level To: Accountant Approval and that did not work also.
I think we need more clarification on how Level From and Level To are supposed to work. Are we not able to layer workflows in this manner? What should the configuration be to get the workflow working the way they want?
Here are their PO Approval Levels:
And here are the user assignments:
And here is the error Danell keeps getting:
-
Following
-
Hi Katie, My understanding is that when a “Level from” is assigned, this means that a user cannot approve a PO until manager approves it. In this case, Danell can only approve once its been approved by manager. To clarify, if an approver does not have a level from defined, they can approve anything up to the level to defined.
What's unclear is the PO in reference that you had snapshot for! What are the steps being taken here by Danell, it suggests its already been approved to the highest level.. Chanh Huynh - thoughts!
-
Himanshu is correct. For the Accountant to approve the PO, the PO must be approved to Manager Approval. If you want to the Accountant to be able to approve anything before this, perhaps set the From to Employee Completed as this will allow them to pick up any POs once the employee has approved. The Accountant does not have to approve the PO before the Manager Approval but ‘can’ if they need to step in. I would also recommend setting the Manager Approval from Employee Completed too as this will only allow them to approve the PO once the employee has finished with it and has endorsed it for approval.
From what I can see in the screenshot, the Executives will not be able to approve unless it has been approved by the Accountant - so this would address POs skipping the Accountant and going to the Exec. -
Thanks Himanshu and Chanh Huynh for help in responding to Documentus posts! Teamwork!
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
4 comments
Date Votes