Approving a Purchase Order

Before you send a PO to a vendor and receive items, it must first be approved by designated approvers. You can add up to five approval stages per PO.

To raise an approval request,

Go to the PO details page.
Under the Approvals tab, click Add Stage to add the first stage of approval. Click the plus icon to add subsequent stages.
Select the required approvers for each stage. In each approval stage, you can add multiple users as PO approvers. All users with purchase order approval permission are listed in the drop-down, irrespective of your site or PO's site.
Under One Time Configuration, you can enable the following options and click Save.

Options	Purpose
Auto send approval notifications to subsequent stages and newly added approvers in the current stage	• When enabled, approval notifications are sent to approvers in the subsequent stage automatically after the current stage is approved. • If new approvers are added to the current stage, they will also receive notifications automatically.
All configured approvers should approve	• When enabled, all approvers must approve the purchase order. • If disabled, approval from any one of the approvers is sufficient to proceed.
Note: This is a one-time configuration and cannot be modified. This configuration will be followed throughout the purchase order's approval process. Learn more.

To add new approvers, click Edit Stage on the top.

Approve/Reject Approvals

After you submit their approval request, approvers are notified immediately via email and push notification and in the My Pending Approvals in the header.

The approval status will remain Pending Approval until the approver approves or rejects it.

To resend an approval, use the Send for Approval icon next to it.

To approve or reject an approval, click Take Action.

Delegate Approvals

Based on delegation settings, you can delegate your approvals, revoke delegation, and act on approvals you have delegated.

You can delegate an approval to one user only.

Delegates cannot reassign the approval. They can only approve or reject it.

Click Delegate Approval next to the approval record.
Select the user to whom you want to delegate and click Delegate.

After you delegate, your approval status changes to Delegated, and the approval will remain pending with the delegate. To cancel the delegation, click Revoke in the delegate's approval.

To notify the delegated approver when the delegation is revoked, SDAdmin must enable Notify backup approver when the delegated approval is revoked under Setup > Automation > Notification Rules > Other Notifications > Delegation Notifications.

The original approvers can act on approvals they have delegated if Allow original approver to take actions on delegated approvals is enabled under Setup > Automation > Delegation.

Whatever approval action you take is logged in the corresponding approval records. Approval comments are displayed under the approver's name.

After delegation, if you act on the approval before the delegate does, the status in the delegate's approval changes to Action Taken by Original Approver and the delegate cannot take further actions.

Purchase Order Approval Scenarios

The approval depends on the All configured approvers should approve option under One Time Configuration.

Approval Type	Scenario	Description	PO Approval Status
Option disabled	One or more approvers approve the PO	Approval from any one approver in a stage is enough to move to the next stage (or mark the PO as approved for single-stage approvals).	Approved
Option enabled	All approvers approve the PO	All approvers in the stage must approve the PO before it proceeds to the next stage or gets fully approved.	Approved
Option enabled	One or more approvers reject the PO	If any approver in the stage rejects the PO, the PO and stage statuses are immediately set to Rejected. Approval requests are not sent to subsequent stages.	Rejected

Multi-Stage Approval Flow

Scenario	Description	PO Approval Status
Stage 1 approved	All approvers in Stage 1 approve; approval request automatically sent to Stage 2 approvers.	Pending approval
Stage 1 rejected	An approver in Stage 1 rejects the PO; no notifications sent to later stages.	Rejected
Stage 1 pending	Approvals in Stage 1 are incomplete; requests for subsequent stages are not yet sent.	Pending approval