Approvals

Some documents need someone's go-ahead before they count: purchase and service orders, payment vouchers, payroll and budgets. MannaBooks can send each one up a chain of approvers, level by level.

How it works without rules

With no rules, anyone whose role has the approve permission (for example Purchase orders: approve) approves a document with its Approve button.

Approval limits. On Team and access you can give a member an approval limit. When they approve something above their limit, it goes to the module in-charge instead: the head of the department that runs purchasing, finance or HR (set on Departments). If there is no in-charge, it goes to the owner.

Setting up approval rules

Open Approvals > Rules (or Organisation > Approval rules) and choose New rule:

1. Applies to: the kind of document.
2. From amount and Up to: the band the rule covers. Leave Up to blank for "and above". You can have several rules for one kind, such as one for 0 to 50,000 and another for over 50,000.
3. Approved by, in order: add the levels. Each level is one of:
   • Their supervisor: whoever the person who prepared it reports to (set on their employee record).
   • Their department head.
   • The module in-charge.
   • Anyone with a role, such as Accountant.
   • A named person.
   • The owner.

Nobody approves their own document. If a level finds nobody (for example the preparer has no supervisor), the owner decides at that level.

Sending and approving

• On a document that a rule covers, the Approval box shows who must approve it. Choose Send for approval.
• Each approver gets an email and sees it under Approvals > Waiting for me. They can approve from there or from the document itself, on a phone too.
• Don't approve needs a reason, which the person who sent it sees. They fix the document and Send again.
• When the last level approves, the document is approved: an order can be received, a voucher paid, payroll posted, a budget used.
• The person who sent it can Withdraw a request still waiting.

If a document's amount goes up after it was approved, it has to go round again.