Approval Procedures

Approval procedures are used in companies in which the standard work procedure
requires an approval from a manager or senior member in order to generate certain
documents.
A documents approval procedure begins as you add it as a draft document in SAP
Business One. At that same moment, a request for approval is sent to the appropriate
employee (according to the definitions in SAP Business One).
The procedure ends when you receive a final approval and add the document.

Defining Approval Stages

Administration Approval Procedures Define Approval Stages:

Use this window to define approval stages and the users in your company who are
authorized to approve them.

Stage Name type a name for the stage. The value in this field is unique.

Stage Description type a description for the stage.

No. of Approvals Required set the minimal number of approvals required in

order to complete this stage e.g. in case 2 authorizing users have been defined
for this stage, but only 1 is required in order to complete it and move on to the
next stage, this stage will be completed even if only 1 of the 2 users will approve
it.

User select the authorizing users for this stage.

Department - this field displays the department linked to the user. If you wish to
select only users from a certain department, select the appropriate department
from the drop down menu and click Tab in the field User in order to open a
Choose From List window; Only users linked to the selected department will be
displayed.

Defining Approval Templates

Administration Approval Procedures Define Approval Templates:

Use this window to define a template for each conventional approval procedure in your
company, starting from the originators of the documents, specifying the types of
documents to be approved, through the different approval stages till the terms under
which the approval procedure would be launched.
General Fields

Name enter a name for the template. Note that an approval template's name is
unique.

Description type a relevant description for the template.

Active check this box to activate the approval template. The template will
remain active as long as the Active box is checked. Clear this box only if you do
not want the template to be active.
A user, defined as a producer for a certain template, could not clear the Active
box which he is defined in.

Originator tab page

User - select the originator users to which the approval template applies.

Department - if you wish to select only users from a certain department, select
the appropriate department from the drop down menu and click Tab in the field
User in order to open a Choose From List window; Only users linked to the
selected department will be displayed.

Documents tab page

Check the boxes of the documents which require an approval procedure. A

request for approval will be sent as soon as an originator user creates one of the
selected documents.

Stages tab page

Stage - select the relevant stages for this approval template.

Remarks the description of the selected stage will be displayed as

default, however you can type any other remarks if required.

Note!

The order of the stages in this tab page determines the order of their activation
during the approval procedure e.g. the stage in row #1 will be the first stage to be
approved during the approval procedure, the stage in row #2 will be the second
etc.

You may change the order of the stages using the arrow icons on the right. In
order to change the order of a certain stage, click on its row number (under the
column '#') and click on the appropriate arrow to move it upwards or downwards.

Terms tab page

Launch Approval Procedure:

Always all the documents created by the originating users defined in

this approval template will launch a corresponding approval procedure.

When the Following Applies click this radio button and select the required
terms from the list. You may apply more than one term per approval template. As
soon as one term retrieves the result True, the approval procedure is launched.

Choose check the box next to the terms you would like to use.

Term the name of the term.

Ratio select a relevant ratio from the drop down menu e.g. Less Than, Equal
etc.

Value enter the appropriate value to the term selected in the Ratio column.
The values for the terms In Range and Not in Range have to be entered in the
format: low amount-high amount along with relevant currency symbols e.g.
1000-3000.

Note! It is possible to define several approval templates for the same document.

Terms Based On User Queries

In addition to the 6 terms embedded in SAP Business One, it is possible to attach
user defined queries as terms for launching an approval procedure.

In order to attach your user query to an approval template, double click a row
number to open the Open Saved Queries window.

Select the required query and click Open.