Workflow & Approvals

Review the transaction before the decision

SERP approval capabilities support review within transaction flows and through approval inquiries. The operator submits the relevant document or request, an authorized reviewer checks the supporting values, and the resulting inquiry establishes whether processing completed. Submission and posting are separate events.

Commercial and financial approvals

Documented approval areas include sales quotations, orders, deliveries, invoices and payments, alongside purchasing, goods receipts and supplier transactions. Banking, journals and inventory changes have relevant approval functions. Scope and reviewers depend on administrative settings and the actual transaction workflow.

Specialized review processes

Projects, HR, quality deviations, controlled documents and AI BOM proposals also use their own review or approval functions. Their states and effects differ. A universal status sequence would hide those differences, so the implementation should preserve the meaning of the approval in each business area.

Handle pending work carefully

Pending sales approval can block conflicting modifications and duplicate submission. Supplier invoice processing also checks pending approval. Review the existing request and its history before trying to submit again. A pending item is evidence of work awaiting a decision, not proof that stock or money has moved.

A practical review checklist

Confirm company, document type and reference, party, dates, quantities, values, tax, account or dimension context and attachments. Review the requester and prior decisions, then record the required reason. Decisions can trigger business effects; verify the resulting transaction after approval rather than relying only on the button click.

Evaluate the capability with your team

Bring a representative business question and the people responsible for the source data, review and final action. Ask for the relevant company configuration, permissions and exception handling to be demonstrated. Follow the result back to its underlying transaction or document so the evaluation is based on an observable workflow.

Agree which functions are needed at launch and which depend on later configuration. Review the effect of incomplete data, missing permission and uncertain external outcomes. These details help set useful operating procedures and identify the information that an administrator must maintain.

Sales approval in commercial context

A reviewer needs more than the total value of a sales document. Customer, branch, delivery requirements, item quantities, discounts, taxes and relevant attachments all contribute to the commercial decision. The documented sales flow blocks certain changes and duplicate submissions while approval is pending. Use the existing request and its inquiry to understand the current state before asking an operator to resubmit or change the underlying document.

Supplier review against receiving evidence

Procurement selection, receipt and invoice review answer different questions. RFQ selection preserves the commercial reason for the supplier decision, including a required explanation when the winner is not L1 for every item. Receipt records describe actual goods received. Invoice validation checks the supplier reference and relevant quantity or price tolerances. A useful approval procedure preserves these separate pieces of evidence instead of treating the purchase-order approval as approval of every subsequent supplier transaction.

People and project approvals

HR has separate approval functions for relevant employee requests, while the Projects extension uses its configured approval levels. An additional expense or material request should be reviewed with its budget or employment context. The resulting decision should be checked in the appropriate inquiry. Viewing the request is not permission to pay, and submitting a project exception does not establish that the budget has been approved for change.

Define evidence of completion

For each approval, agree who submits, who reviews, what evidence is required and which resulting record confirms completion. Include rejection and pending-work scenarios in the demonstration. Some decisions can trigger posting or downstream changes, so the reviewer must understand the effect before acting. Review the actual configured workflow rather than inventing a single sequence of draft, approved and posted states for every module.

Practical questions this capability can answer

• Does a submitted request mean a transaction is posted? No. Submission, approval and resulting processing are distinct. Check the resulting inquiry or transaction.
• Can users edit a pending sales approval? Pending approvals can block conflicting modifications or duplicate submission. Review the existing request through its authorized workflow.
• Does every module use the same approval states? No. Document reviews, quality deviations, HR requests and financial transactions have different states and effects.