Creating Accounts Payable and Purchase Order Workflows in Sage Intacct
Organizations depend on fast, accurate, and efficient workflows. Documents need to flow without delay through the appropriate life cycle, with approvals received as needed at various points along the way. That might sound easy, but the business reality is that it can be fraught with bottlenecks and errors.
By creating tailored accounts payable (AP) and purchase order (PO) workflows in Sage Intacct, you can accelerate and automate your buying cycle so that your team can spend more time on critical tasks. Here, we’ll show you how to configure purchasing approvals and user approver policy.
Purchasing Approval Configuration Options
Go to Purchasing > Setup > Configuration > Enable purchasing approval to set up the approval processes. You can configure the process to:
- Require vendor for approval: The vendor must then be present on the transaction before being sent for approval.
- New approval: If the dollar amount or quantity changes after all approvals are completed, you can require that the transaction go through the approval cycle again.
- Email notification: Automatically send email notices to users in the purchasing approval chain.
- Enable Delegation: This allows approvers to delegate their approval responsibility to assigned delegates (with privileges) who can approve on their behalf.
- Unrestricted: You can select a super user who can terminate the rest of the approval cycle for a transaction by approving or declining the transaction.
Configuring User Approver Policy
You can set purchasing approval permissions by user or role. Approvers in the “Value Approval” and “Value Approval – Transaction Department” approval routing must have at least one Approval Level enabled. All Purchasing Approvers must have “Approve Purchase Transaction” enabled.
To configure user approver policy, go to Purchasing > Setup > More > Approval Policies. Select your desired Transaction Definition and Desired Rule Type.
You’ll then want to select the user, employee, and department type:
- Named User
- Approval requests are routed to a specific user or manager
- Non CRM type, has approval permissions, not restricted by entities, departments or territories
- Employee Manager
- Approval requests are routed to the employees manager
- Department
- Approval requests are sent to the manager of the department to which the employee submitting the transaction is assigned
And, finally, set the transaction types:
- Transaction Department Approval
- Approval requests are sent to the manager of the department selected in the transaction; only one department can be selected per document
- Transaction Location Approval
- Approval requests are sent to the manager of the location selected in the transaction; only one location can be selected per document
- Transaction Project Manager Approval
- Approval requests are sent to the manager of the project selected in the transaction; only one project can be selected per document
Example Use Case
In a typical example, a purchase requisition would route to the submitter’s manager, and from there to the manager of the department on the transaction. The routing is sequential and any rejection stops the approval flow. The requester is notified if email notifications are enabled.
By setting up your AP and PO workflows in Sage Intacct, you can ensure that the process runs smoothly and according to your needs and preferences.
Streamline Your Workflows
Want to learn more about how to set up AP and PO workflows in Sage Intacct? The team at ACI Consulting is here to help. Contact us today to get all your Sage Intacct questions answered.
