Review and decide

The Approvals screen has two tabs: Pending Actions, the requests waiting on your role, and Initiated Approvals, the requests you sent that are still waiting on someone else. This page covers reading both, deciding a request, deciding several at once, and what happens next.

6 min readYou need: the role a request is waiting on, to approve or rejectBefore you start: a document saved under an approval rule, so there is something to decide

Video coming soon: Tour of Approvals

Go to Biz View › Approvals. It opens on Pending Actions. Switch with the two tabs at the top: Pending Actions and Initiated Approvals. Both show the business unit you are working in. Dates follow your business unit's date format.

Pending Actions

One row for each request waiting on your role, newest update first.

Column	Shows
Department	The department the rule is for, or "All" if the rule has none.
Workflow Name	The kind of document, as your administrator named the rule.
Request Name	The document number. A supplier's offer also says how many prices it holds.
Approval Value	The document's amount, which decided the level it needs.
Date	The date of the last update.
User initiator	The person who saved the document.
Pending Approval	The role it is waiting on.
Created At	When the request was raised.
Updated At	When it last changed.

The table header has a column chooser. Your choice is remembered. Workflow Name, Request Name, Created At and Updated At sort the page you are looking at when you click the heading. Page controls sit under the table. Click a row to open the request.

Filter the list

Workflow and Department

Pick a name in the Workflow box and click Submit. The list shows only that kind of document and a chip with its name appears under the box. The Workflow box offers Item, Purchase Order, Purchase Request, Sales Order, Supplier, Bill, Bill Of Material, Purchase Return, Sales Return, GRN, Stock Adjustment and Expense.

A Department box appears once you pick a workflow, except for Item, Supplier and Bill Of Material, which have no department. Pick a department and click Submit again to narrow further. Changing the workflow clears the department. Choose "Select a workflow..." and Submit to see everything again.

These lists have no search of their own: use the Workflow and Department boxes. They have no export, import or print either. To print or email a document, open it from its own list. See Print, PDF and email.

Approve or reject

You can decide from the list or from the full approval screen. Both do the same thing. A request is yours to decide only when every level before yours has signed.

From the list

Each row has icons. Hover one to see its name.

• View opens the full approval screen.
• Approve approves at once. There is no comment box here: the comment is recorded as "Approved". A message tells you where it went: "has been approved." when you were the last level, or "has been approved and forwarded to" the next role.
• Reject opens a small window headed "Reject Approval". Type the Reason for rejection. It is required. Click Reject in the window (or press Enter), or Cancel.
• Record inspection appears instead of Approve and Reject on a quality inspection request. An inspection is recorded, not approved.

The list refreshes after each decision. Offers and RFQ supplier approvals have no Approve or Reject icon: they are decided on their own screen.

The approval screen

Click View or a row. The document is on the left and the steps are on the right.

• Steps. One for each level, in order, each with the role's name. A signed step has a tick and that approver's comment. The step whose turn it is has a filled ring. Later steps are empty.
• Comment. When it is your turn, a box reads "Enter comment" under your step. Add a comment, or leave it empty to approve as "Approved". A comment is required to reject: leave it empty and click Reject and the box is outlined in red.
• Approve and Reject show at the top when it is your turn. If it is not your turn, you see Close instead and can only read.
• Prev and Next move through your list without going back to it. After you decide, the screen moves on to the next request, or back to the list when none is left.
• Documents. Files attached to the document, listed under the steps. Click one to open it beside the steps. With none, it says "No documents available".
• Pricing & History appears on a purchase request, a purchase order, a bill, a sales order and an invoice. It opens the pricing of the lines and, for people with View on Bills (purchase) or Invoices (sales), the price history. A warning strip above the document says when a line is priced differently from what pricing quotes for that item and that party. It is advice only: you can still approve.

Video coming soon: Approve a request

Bulk Approve

Decide several requests with one comment

Bulk Approve is part of some plans. If you never see the button, ask your administrator.

1. Pick a Workflow and click Submit. Bulk Approve works on one kind of document at a time, so the button and the tick boxes appear only after a workflow is chosen.
2. Tick the rows you want, in the first column next to Department. The tick box in the column heading selects every row on the page.
3. Click Bulk Approve. It is greyed out until you have ticked at least one.
4. In the "Bulk Approval" window type a Comment. It is required for both outcomes.
5. Click Approve or Reject. A progress bar reads "Bulk approval in process...". When it finishes you see "Bulk upload completed!" and the list refreshes.

Your decision is recorded at your own level for each ticked request. If one of them is not waiting on your role, nothing is sent and you see "You are not the current approver on one or more selected documents". Ticks are cleared when you click Submit again. Offers and RFQ supplier approvals have no tick box.

Video coming soon: Approve several at once

Offers and RFQ supplier approvals

An offer from a supplier is not approved as one document. Each price in it is decided on its own, and you send all your decisions once.

• Open the request. For every price waiting on your level, mark Approved, Rejected or On Hold, and write its reason. Approve all marks them all at once.
• Click Submit decisions. All your decisions are sent together. If any price has been decided by someone else in the meantime, nothing is sent and the screen names the prices that moved.
• Approving a price records that supplier's rate in your item pricing.

A supplier approval on an RFQ works the same way: its own screen, three outcomes, one submit. An RFQ itself is decided like any other document, and approving it lets it be sent to suppliers.

Initiated Approvals

The second tab lists the requests you sent that are still waiting. It has the same layout as Pending Actions, without a filter box and without the Approval Value and Date columns, and with a Status column.

Column	Shows
Department	The department the rule is for, or "All".
Workflow Name	The kind of document.
Request Name	The document number.
Status	See Status. A new request may read "IN_REVIEW" until the first level signs. It means In Review.
User initiator	Who saved the document.
Pending Approval	The role it is waiting on now.
Created At	When the request was raised.
Updated At	When it last changed.

Click a row to open the same approval screen. If you hold the role at the level whose turn it is, you can decide it there too. Otherwise you can read it and click Close.

A request leaves this tab once it is approved, rejected or cancelled. The tab does not keep a history. You are told by email: see Approvals. The document's Approval tab keeps the full trail. The Created At and Updated At headings on this tab do not re-sort the list yet: it stays newest update first.

Status

Status	Means
In Review	The document is waiting for one or more levels. Nothing has posted.
Approved	Every level has signed. The document goes ahead, takes its normal status (usually Open, and Active for items, suppliers and bills of material) and posts.
Rejected	A level refused. The document stops (items, suppliers and bills of material become Inactive). Nothing posts.
Cancelled	The document was cancelled or voided while it waited. Its request is closed and leaves the lists.

A rejection does not undo anything that was already posted. If you edit a document that was already approved and the edit goes back for approval, rejecting the edit puts the document back as it was before.

On mobile

Same on iPhone and Android. Open Approvals from the menu. It has two tabs, Pending and Initiated.

• Each request is a card: the document number, the workflow name, who sent it (on Pending) or the department (on Initiated), the Value and the date. The Value is left out when there is none, or when you may not see costs. It shows a rupee sign for every business, whatever its currency, so open the document to see its own currency.
• Tap a card to expand it. It shows "Pending with:" and the role the request is waiting on. The full steps are on the web.
• To decide, open the document and use Approve or Reject from its action menu. This is on purchase requests, purchase orders, GRNs and sales orders, when it is your role's turn. Approve can carry a comment and Reject needs one. For anything else, please decide on the web.
• Tap the eye on a card to open the document and read it.
• Pull down to refresh. More requests load as you scroll, 20 at a time. If a page fails you see "Couldn't load approvals." and a Retry button.
• There is no filter box, no Bulk Approve and no column chooser. Sales returns and purchase returns are not available on mobile, so their requests are not listed. Use the web.

The Android app is on Google Play. The iPhone app is coming soon to the App Store.

Problems and fixes

I do not see a request I expected

It is waiting on a different role, or on an earlier level, or in another business unit. You only see a request when it is your role's turn. Check the Pending Approval column of the person who sent it on Initiated Approvals, and the business unit at the top.

The screen shows "Go to Admin Panel" instead of a list

Your user has no role in this business unit yet. Ask your administrator to assign one.

View opens an empty screen for a return or a stock adjustment

On the web, Approve and Reject on the list row work for purchase returns, sales returns and stock adjustments, but the full approval screen does not open them yet. Decide from the list row, or open the document from its own list and read its Approval tab.

Approve and Reject on an expense row do nothing

Open the expense with View and decide on the approval screen, or use Bulk Approve with the Expense workflow.

I opened a request from Pending Actions and Close took me to Initiated Approvals

For now, Close takes you to the Initiated Approvals tab rather than back to the one you came from. Click Pending Actions to go back.

I cannot approve from the Approvals screen on my phone

On the phone, decide from the document: open it and use Approve or Reject in its action menu (purchase requests, purchase orders, GRNs and sales orders). For anything else, decide on the web.

The document is In Review and I have no Approve button

It is not your role's turn, or your role is not on the rule. Read the steps on the approval screen and ask the role at the pending step.

I rejected by mistake

A decision cannot be changed from the Approvals screen. Tell the person who raised the document.

Related

• Approvals overview
• Approvals on a document
• Approval workflows
• Workspace