Configuring Purchase Order (PO) authorisation/approval/sign-off requirements

By default, anyone in Breww who has access to purchase orders can finalise a purchase order. If your business needs to have purchase orders approved before they can be finalised, you can configure this in Breww.

Building approval rules

You can define your purchase order approval rules by going to SettingsStock items & purchasingPurchase order approval rules.

From here, you can build out the rules required. This works using the same rule-building tool that is used in a number of places in Breww. If you need help using this tool, please see the delivery rules guide as it has a video showing how to build your logic conditions and outcomes (although the options are different, the basic premise of how to use the rule builder is the same).

You have the option to create conditions which direct different possible outcomes, for example, you may:

  • Not require approvals on POs valued less than £/$/€100, unless it’s from Acme Hop Supplies, in which case it must be approved by John Doe specifically.
  • For POs up to £/$/€500, they need approval from one person (say a mid-level manager)
  • For POs over £/$/€500, they might need approval from all mid-level managers and one senior manager.

As an example, this could be built out and would look like the following. AA, BB and CC are mid-level mangers and DD and EE are senior managers.

Raising purchase orders

POs can be raised as normal and when the person creating the PO clicks the finalise button, this will either finalise it (if it doesn’t need approval) or request approvals from the appropriate people.

If approval is needed, this will be shown clearly on the PO. This example below would be for a PO of over £1000 in the above example:

This shows who needs to approve this purchase order.

Approving purchase orders

When the user with the initials “CC” (for example) is logged into their account, they will now see a blue badge by “Stock items” in the main menu. This indicates how many approvals they are required to make.

Screenshot 2024-04-13 at 11.38.21

When clicking through to the Stock items list, they will be shown a list of their outstanding approvals at the top of the page.

When clicking through to the PO, they’ll see an Approve button at the top-right of the page.

Upon approval from them, this will be reflected in the breakdown of outstanding approvals, with a green check mark against their initials.

When all required approvals have been made, the PO will automatically be finalised.

1 Like

@luke we have a query on the ‘Approval from Any of…’ rules.
We have some rules configured as ‘Approval from any of…’, however we still see these as requiring approval when they have already been approved.
E.g. Requires approval from A or B, approved by A, PO is finalised, however this still shows as requiring approval from B. Is this correct?
We were working on the assumption that with an ‘Any of’ approval, that as long as a PO was approved by someone, with the authorisation, then this approval process is effectively closed off and removed from notification - as opposed to any one can approve and finalise, but everyone remains outstanding, still notified & flagged to carry out approval.
Hope that makes sense?

Hi Steve,

The “any of” approval should only require approval from one of the approvers listed in the “any of” Approval decision. Would you mind opening a support ticket and granting us access to your account? I can look into this for you.

Cheers!

1 Like

The managers the we require approval from do not use Breww every day, is there anyway to turn on email notifications so the managers know when there is a PO waiting to be approved.

1 Like

Agree with Jamie. Is there any notification please we can turn on to let approvers know that there are PO’s waiting for their sign-off?

Hi @jamie-oldman1 @lara-dyus,

There is not yet a feature to have an email notification sent to approvers, but it does look like a feature that would attract interest, so I would definitely suggest raising this as a feature request, so it lands with the right team to review and adding your votes.

Feature Request here: Email notification to approvers for purchase orders requiring approval

1 Like