Background: Approval Cycle Maintenance

Use the Approvals Maintenance (APPM) program to set up approval cycles for each level in an approval hierarchy. See Road Map for work flow.

This topic has these subtopics:

Approval
Line Limits
Changes to an Order
Not QA Approved
Not Compliant
Hierarchy or Approval Cycle Changes
Custom Approval Logic
Mobile App

Approval

Dependent approvals: A user at one level has to sign off before the user at the next level does.

Independent approvals: Users may sign off in any order or concurrently.

If all lines are approved:

  • The order is approved

  • If any line is not approved, the order is not printed or sent to the print queue.

You can print the order with a print program. However, * NOT APPROVED * prints in the upper-right corner of each page.

Line Limits

You can specify line limits to sales orders, invoices, and credit memos (Qty X Price / Cost), but not to the total dollar amount of the entire order.

Changes to an Order

New approvals are required if:

  • You set Approval limit amounts and changes to an order exceed the amount you entered in the Variance allowed field.

  • Approval is not based on Approval limit amounts, but new lines were added to the order.

Not QA Approved

If NOT QA APPROVED is an Approval type and you select the QA approved? field for an item in the Vendor Price Maintenance (VMM) program, an order's pending approval status does not change. However, new orders for the item will not require approval for this reason.

Not Compliant

If NOT COMPLIANT is an Approval type and you select the Compliant? field for an item in the Compliant Items By Manufacturer (VGMI) program, an order's pending approval status does not change. However, new orders for the item will not require approval for this reason.

Hierarchy or Approval Cycle Changes

You may change your hierarchy or an approval cycle. These changes affect only new orders. Existing orders must be approved under the criteria in affect that the time you entered the order.

However, you can run these programs to evaluate open orders that have not been printed:

  • Open Purchase Order Approval Check (VAPPCK)

  • Sales Order & Shipment Approval Check (SAPPCK)

  • Bill of Material Approval Check (BAPPCK)

The program adds any orders that meet the new criteria to the approval cycle. It does not remove any orders with pending approvals from a cycle.

Custom Approval Logic

You can customize approval criteria for purchase order lines, sales order lines, shipment lines, invoices and bills of material approvals. QICBASIC and Report Generator are supported; samples of each are provided with PowerShift 4.10 and later:

  • =USRAPP is a QICBASIC program that tests for approval logic and sends back up to three different flags/reasons

  • $FABAPP is a sample Report Generator specification that tests for approval logic and sends back up to three different approval flags/reasons

Mobile App

An application that sends pending approval notifications to mobile devices (e.g., smart phones) is available.

  • Requests can be an be approved or denied, and a remark of up to 80-characters entered via the mobile device.

  • Setting up an ID with user type P (PowerShift user) in Web User Maintenance (XUIM) to allows users to access a web account for approval notifications.

  • Notifications (ZNTFY) can be scheduled through the PowerShift Job Scheduler (JOBS) to send notifications of pending approvals at any interval desired.