DBC: Approvals

COMPANY APPROVALS

Approval Permissions

Each area of permissions has a default setting inherited from the distributor. For each individual company administrators can override these defaults within the Override column.

• Display approvers in approval confirmations: This option lets you allow or deny the displaying of approvers in the approval confirmations. This option is sitewide but can be turned on/off at the group level on the customer site, by signing on as a customer admin, going under the Work With Groups page, and then the Permissions section (Show Approver).
• Copy approvers on approval action emails: Designate if all approvers should receive e-mail notification when action is taken on approval orders. For example, if there are five users in the approval group, and one of them approves an order, should the other four be notified that the order has been approved?
• Allow advanced approver modifications: This option allows the approver to edit any shipping and billing information for the order, including the selected shipping location, delivery option, delivery instructions, cost center, and PO number.
• Require all rules approved by all approvers: It's possible an order will be triggered for approval because there was more than one approval rule applied. This option requires one approver from each approval group to approve the order before the order has final approval. However, any one approver can still deny the order. In that scenario, it is recommended that they just remove their lines from the order and then approve “as is” so they are not canceling the entire order.
• Send approval reminders in X days: This option will cause the system to send out approval reminders for orders that are in the “pending” state, based upon a number of days, as defined by the administrator. If the order has not been approved/denied within X days, one reminder will be sent to the approver(s).
• Allow approval rule override at user level: Traditionally, any approval rules set at the user level have been applied “in addition to” the rules set at the group level. If this new option is enabled, the user-level settings specifically for the “Dollars Threshold per Calendar Month” and “Dollars Threshold Within Days” fields can override the group setting. This can be used to increase or decrease the threshold amounts by the user. The other approval settings at the user level will continue to be used in addition to the group rules.
• Allow order history view from approval screen: This option will allow the approver to view order history for the user that has placed the order they are reviewing for approval.
• Limit approval order history by date range: If "Allow order history view from approval screen" has been enabled, this option will limit the amount of order history that is shown to the approver.
• Limit approval from date/ limit approval to date: If "Limit approval order history by date range has been enabled, use one or both fields to set the desired date range you would like to be displayed for order history in the approval center.

Shipping Locations Approvals

Admins can assign an approval to custom locations and/or location code(s).

• Search: This will allow the admin to search the list of shipping locations for the company.
• Assign custom locations to: When a user selects a custom location as their shipping option, this group will approve those orders. Select Group and click "Assign."
• Assign selected locations to: This will allow the admin to select a location individually or as a group, by clicking the checkbox next to each location. Once locations are selected, select a group from this dropdown and click "Assign."

The table shows the Location Code, Cut Location Code, Location Description, Location Address 1, and Group Approved By. Each column is sortable once clicked. Once a group is assigned to a location it will appear within the Approved By column. If the Approved By column is blank, there is no approver group assigned to that location. This approval rule works in combination with the three other approval rule types - group, item, and quantity. The end user will continue to receive an email stating their order is pending approval and approvers will continue to receive an email stating an order requires their approval.

GROUP APPROVALS

From "Work With Groups" on the customer site, you can choose to "Edit" a group and click on the Approvals link. This will bring you to the main approval settings page for the group.

General Approval Permissions

To enable approval rules for the group, check the enable checkbox next to any option that should be used, and fill in appropriate threshold values for any options that require one. If none of the approval rules are enabled, then no approval would be required for this group. Approval group assignment are only applicable if one or more approval rules are enabled.

• Require approval on every order: All orders will require approval and some of the other approval options will no longer apply and show as deactivated.
• Dollar threshold per order: Enter a dollar amount and anything greater than this dollar amount will require approval.
• Dollar threshold per calendar month: Enter a dollar amount per month and when reached any additional orders will require approval.
• Dollars threshold within days: Enter in a dollar amount and a number of days and when the combination is reached any additional orders will require approval.
• Shipping methods requiring approval: Orders using the selected shipping methods will require approval.
• User selected an add-on service: Orders containing an item with an Add-On Service will require approval.
• Exceeds item order limits within: Enter a number of days and anything exceeding this number of days will require approval.
• Billing method(s) requiring approval: Select from Cost Center, Spending Account, and/or Credit Card. Any combination of these options can be selected.
  • If selecting Cost Center, a list of cost centers available to this group will appear in the Associated with Group area. You can move the cost centers requiring approval to the Require Approval area, which will trigger the Approval process.
  • If selecting Spending Account, a list of spending accounts available to this group will appear in the Associated with Group area. You can move the spending accounts requiring approval to the Require Approval area, which will trigger the Approval process.
  • If selecting Credit Card, a credit card option will appear in the Associated with Group area. You can move the single credit card option to the Require Approval area, which will trigger the Approval process for all credit card orders.
• Enable approval warning: If enabled, the user will be warned before checking out that their order will trigger an approval. This allows them to modify the order so that they might be able to place the order without an approval delay.

  • Which group approves this user: Designate which group should be able to approve orders placed by any users of this group.

    
    

Quantity Based Approval Rules

This area allows you to create rules by item, or groups of items, where you can set ordering limits based on single orders, or orders placed during a month/period. You will also select which group approves these orders.

Start by selecting "Create a new approval rule." Once selected you will be brought to the following screen:

1. Select the item(s) the rule should be applied to.
2. Enter the quantity (in eaches) that should trigger the approval rule. For example, if an item is packaged as a BOX of 250, you would enter 750 if the rule should be triggered at 3 boxes of
3. If the packaging is later changed to BOX of 50, the rule would then trigger if 15 boxes of 50 were ordered (assuming the rule remained at 750 eaches).
4. Select if the “policy type” is per order, per month, or per period. If selecting “per period”, set the number of calendar days for the desired period.
5. Select if this rule is only for a specific date range or should continue perpetually.
6. If multiple items were selected in step 1, designate if the trigger quantity should be applied to individual items or all the items collectively. For example, if you chose 10 t-shirt items, with a trigger quantity of 25; would the rule be interpreted as they can order up to 25 of each shirt, or just a total of 25 from any combination of the shirts?

7. Select the approver group for this rule. This can be different from the approver group for the standard group rules.

   
   

Quantity Based Approval Rules Maintenance

In the last section, we talked about setting up quantity-based approval rules at the group level. From the legacy distributor admin site, there is an Approvals link under the Work With Companies section (once you’ve chosen to edit a company).

This area allows you to view and maintain all the quantity-based approval rules that have been set up on the site. In addition, you also have the option of creating new quantity-based approval rules. When setting up these rules in the Work With Groups area, you are creating the rule only for a single group. Setting up a rule from the Work With Companies area gives you an advantage that a rule can be set up and applied to multiple groups at once. When you click the button to add a new rule, you are brought to a screen that looks just the same as the one from Work With Groups, only it has a new section at the top where you can select the groups to apply the rule to.

Advance User Level Approval Setup

Under Work With Users, each user has an "Advanced Settings" link you can click on. Under these settings, you can choose the "Approvals" section. This brings up a screen that looks identical to the approval settings that you see under Work With Groups. Any settings that you set at the user level will be applied “in addition to” the settings that exist at the group level. (Note: Under the company settings, we discussed the “Allow Approval Rule Override at User Level” parameter. If that parameter is enabled, the “Dollars Threshold per Calendar Month” and “Dollars Threshold Within Days” options can be used to override the group rules, but all other settings are applied on top of the existing group rules.) So, the user could place an order that triggers both a group-level approval rule, as well as a user-level approval rule, which would send out multiple “This order requires your approval” e-mails.

Approver View

If an order requires approval the approver will receive an email notification. They can click the link with the email that will take them to the approval center or when they log into the site, they will have a link to the approval center. Here they can see a list of all orders pending their approval. There is also an Action Taken link that will display approval orders that have previously been approved or denied.

Sample Approver Email Notification:

Approval Center:

Clicking on any order number, will take the approver into the details of that order where they can begin to make make modifications if desired. This screen will vary based on your company settings. If the order history view option has been allowed, there will be a tab at the top to review the order history of the user that placed the order.

The Approval Reasons section will list all the approval rules that were triggered on this order. If the Require All Rules Approved by All Approvers option has been enabled, you (and the user) can track the order approval progress by seeing which other approver groups have approved their specific rules. It will show which user made the action, the date of that action, as well as any comments they made. A status of “no action” indicates no users for that approval rule have acted up to this point.

Within the Shipping and Billing section, if the advanced approver modifications option has been allowed, you will see a pencil icon in both the ship to and bill to sections. Clicking on the pencil icon will allow for the modification of all fields in those areas.

In the Item section, you can add and remove line items, update quantities of existing items, and modify customizable items as needed. The order can be approved by clicking the "Approve Order As Is"" button (if no modifications have been made) or the Approve with Modifications" button (if modifications were made). Clicking on the "Cancel This Order" button will deny the order. Clicking on either button will bring up a box where you can enter comments to the user, and you will need to click a button to confirm or deny your desired action. If denying the order, a comment is required.

User View

If group permission, "Enable approval warning" is enabled, the user will see an approval warning at checkout.

Once order is placed the user will receive an email stating their order is pending approval. Once the approver takes action on the order the user will receive a second email stating their order has been Approved, Modified, or Denied.

Sample User Emails for Approvals:

In account history, the order will show a PENDING status while it is pending approval. After the approver(s) have acted, the status will be updated to APPROVED, MODIFIED, or DENIED.

Once user clicks the order they will see further details of the approval status.