Financial Approval Routing - Purchase Orders

This functionality is currently only available to a small testing group.

Financial Approval Routing allows you to configure Arbor Finance to enforce an automated approvals flow for purchase orders. An order can be placed into the system and no further actions will be possible until the order has been electronically approved within Arbor Finance. This process includes E-Procurement purchase orders. There are various options for configuration, along with specific setup requirements, which will be explained in this article.

Setting up users to approve purchase orders

To approve Purchase Orders, users must have approval permissions and an authorisation level greater than 0.

In the user settings (System > System setup > User details) under Reporting, set the Approval right to Full.


Click Save to complete the action and repeat for users who need approval rights. 
Note: You must have the role of super admin or admin to change other users' permissions.

Auth Level - Ranges from 0-3. Auth level 0 is for document approval only. To be able to authorise purchase orders a level from 1-3 must be set. 
Auth Limit - Set a monetary limit for users to be able to approve transactions up to that value.
Owned Budgets - Assign budgets to users to enable them to authorise purchase orders for the budgets they have ownership of. 

Setting up financial routing 

To set up the approvals process for your school you will first need to ensure you have the approval routing permission. You must have the role of either super admin or admin to change user permissions.

Navigate to System > System Setup > User Details.
Highlight the relevant user in blue on the left hand side. Click Edit. In the System Manager section, set the Approval Routing permission to Full.
Note: All users who have full permission for this setting can change how the approvals process will work for the school.

Once the permission has been set to full, you will now be able to configure the approval process.

How to set up the approval process

Navigate to System > System Setup > Approvals > PO

Configure up to four sequential approval steps for BACS payments using the following settings:

Spend Limits: Enable to enforce the monetary approval caps set in User Settings.

Budget Owner Must Approve: Enable to require sign-off from assigned budget owners.

Add Step: Add up to four sequential stages assigned to specific individual users or Auth Levels.
 

Example - Budget holders initially authorise the purchase order, it is then sent to the headteacher for final approval. All users who have been assigned budgets are given the same Auth Level (level 1 in this example). The headteacher has been given Auth Level 2 as we do not want them to be included in the Auth Level 1 group. 

Budget owner must authorise is switched on and a two-step process is used for approvals
Step 1 - Any Auth L1 User
Step 2 - Headteacher

Using this example, the purchase order would be sent to the relevant budget holder for approval first and then the headteacher.

Auto-Escalation & Blocking

If a step lacks eligible approvers (e.g. auth limit too low or missing budget owner), the system automatically escalates to the next step. If no step contains an eligible approver, the routing fails, generating a validation error report requiring admin review.

Changing Routing or Permissions

Routing can be changed at any time. Approval requests submitted before routing is changed retain the previously set routing and rules.

The system prevents a user’s Auth Limits, Owned Budgets and Auth Levels from being changed if a Pending Approval is awaiting their review. 

Sending a purchase order for approval 

The purchase order is entered into the system as usual, including E-Procurement orders. After clicking Create Order, the system runs a validation check to detect any authorisation errors (such as enabling Budget Owner Must Approve without assigning a user to the purchase order's budget). Any flagged issues will appear on a validation report and must be resolved before you can proceed.

Provided there are no errors, you can click proceed. The purchase order will then enter a pending approval state and can be viewed in the Search/Process screen or approvals area.

Note: Purchase orders that are batched are not sent for approval until posted.

Viewing a purchase order that is pending approval

In the search/process screen you can view all of the purchase orders pending approval, including E-Procurement orders by changing the type in the drop down.

Using the Action tab in this screen you can Edit, View Approval or Delete the purchase order. For E-Procurement orders you can only edit the budget/analysis codes, you cannot add new lines.

Clicking on View Approval will redirect you to the approvals screen. In the approvals screen you can view the status of the purchase order to see who has approved or needs to approve the purchase order.

Note: Only users with the role of super admin will be able to view all documents in this area. Other roles will only be able to view documents they have sent for approval or been sent to approve.

Select the relevant purchase order and click on Detail View.

This will display the details of the purchase order. Click on View Approval Steps to see the status of each approval step.

Approving or rejecting a purchase order

When an approval is requested, the assigned user receives an email from [e-mail] and an in-app notification. You can click the link in the email to sign in, and the link in the notification to access the approval request. 

Upon logging in, a red dot appears on the notification bell.

Click Go to Approvals screen from the popup, or access it manually via the user menu (under your name in the top right corner) by clicking Approvals.

The approvals screen contains filters to help search for the relevant documents to approve. Set the Approval Type filter to Submitted to me to view all documents awaiting your approval.

Highlight the relevant document and click on Detail View.

In Detail View, you can review complete transaction details, attached Key Files, and approval steps before choosing to approve or reject the request:

Approve: Advances the request to the next designated approver or, upon final approval, posts the Purchase Order. The requester receives both an email and an in-app notification once fully approved.

Reject: Updates the approval status to Rejected and alerts the requester via email and in-app notification. Requesters can then edit and resubmit rejected Purchase Orders, which restarts the approval process from Step 1.