Set approval rules

Each approval policy has a Rules card under its tiers. The rules decide three things: whether the person who raised a request can approve it, when approvers are reminded and when admins are told, and, for purchase orders, how far an approved total can rise before someone has to approve it again. The defaults suit most teams, so check them once and change only what your team needs.

Before you begin

• You need to be an administrator, or have a role with Approval Policies → Edit rules (which includes View rules). With only View rules, you see You can view these rules. Ask an admin to change them. and the controls are greyed out. See Approval permissions reference.
• The policy must be on. The Rules card only appears while Require approval for that document is switched on. See Set up purchase order approvals.
• Each tab has its own rules, so set them on each of Purchase orders, Vendor deposits and Bill payments.

Steps

1. Go to Settings → Purchasing → Approval Policies, and open the tab for the policy you want to change.

2. In the Rules card, under Self-approval, choose who can approve a request they raised:

   • Only if they're the sole approver (Recommended, and the default): Whoever raised the request can't approve it — unless nobody else can. Then they can, and the approval is labelled “Self-approved”.
   • Never: Whoever raised the request can never approve it. If that leaves nobody, admins are alerted to re-route or override.
   • Allow — the requester counts like any other approver: Approvers can approve their own requests.

3. Under Reminders, enter how many hours to wait in Remind approvers every, and how many reminders to send in up to … times.

   The default reads Remind approvers every 24 hours, up to 3 times, then alert admins. To turn reminders off, clear the hours box. It then shows off.

4. On the Purchase orders tab, under Re-approval, enter a percentage in Ask again when an approved PO's total rises by more than.

   The default is 0%, so any rise asks again. The example team uses 5%.

5. Optional: on the Purchase orders tab, choose where purchase orders need approval under Applies to. See Choose which purchase orders need approval.

6. Optional: in the Test an amount card, choose a person in Raised by (optional) to check the self-approval rule.

   The card says whether that person can approve it themselves in one click or can't approve it directly, and why.

7. Click Save.

   If requests are already waiting on this policy, SKU.io asks Save approval policy? and tells you how many requests are in progress under the old rules. Click Save to keep their approvers, or Save & re-route all to start every one of them over, which clears approvals already given. To change only the rules, click Save. You see Approval policy saved.

How self-approval works

The rule is about the person who raises a document for approval, the requester. It affects two things: whether an approver can approve their own draft in one click, and whether a requester can approve a request raised in their name.

Approving your own draft in one click

When an approver opens a draft they could approve, they see Approve instead of Request Approval. Clicking it approves the draft outright: no request goes out and the approval isn't labelled Self-approved, because they approved as a listed approver. Under Never, one-click approval is off for the person who raised the draft: they see Request Approval, and someone else approves.

With the chapter's example team:

Who opens their own draft	Only if they're the sole approver	Never	Allow
Dana Reyes, a $4,280 purchase order	Request Approval. It waits on Priya Shah or Sam Turner.	Same.	Same.
Priya Shah, a $4,280 purchase order	Approve in one click.	Request Approval. It waits on Sam Turner.	Approve in one click.
Sam Turner, an $18,650 purchase order	Approve in one click. No request goes out, and there's no Self-approved label.	Sam can't approve it. The card reads Your approval policy doesn't let you approve a purchase order you raised — this PO (18,650.00 USD) requires: an administrator (no eligible approver). If he requests approval, admins are alerted to override or re-route it.	Approve in one click.

Approving a request raised in your name

Some requests go out in a person's name without them choosing who approves, for example when they import purchase orders as Open, or ask for an order to be Approved from the forecast's Create Purchase Order dialog or a demand plan's Generate orders and the amount is over their limit. The rule then decides whether they can approve that request:

Whose name the request is in	Only if they're the sole approver	Never	Allow
Priya Shah, a $4,280 purchase order	Waits on Sam Turner.	Waits on Sam Turner.	Priya Shah or Sam Turner can approve it.
Sam Turner, an $18,650 purchase order	Nobody else can approve it, so Sam can, and his approval is labelled Self-approved.	Nobody can approve it. Sam sees You can't approve your own request — waiting on an administrator (no eligible approver). and admins are alerted to override or re-route it.	Sam can approve it.

More about the rule:

• Steps that require everyone skip the requester. On a step whose Requires is All, or that needs more approvals than there are other people, the requester's own place is left out when the rule doesn't let them approve. The step then finishes once everyone else listed has approved. If the requester is the only person listed, Only if they're the sole approver lets them approve it as Self-approved, and Never sends it to admins.
• Delegates count as the person they cover. Someone covering for the requester can't approve that person's own request in their place either.
• Purchase orders that SKU.io raises on its own have no requester, so the rule never stops anyone approving them. These come from auto-reorder and backorder purchasing, forecast schedules and dropship purchase orders raised automatically, and the request shows Requested by System. A purchase order a person imports, or creates from the Create Purchase Order or Generate orders dialogs, is requested in that person's name, so the rule applies.
• A request keeps the rule it started with. Changing Self-approval affects new requests, and requests you re-route.

How reminders and escalation work

• Only weekday hours count. Weekends are skipped. Hours are counted Monday to Friday in your account's time zone, starting when the current step began.
• Reminders are checked once an hour, so one can arrive up to an hour after it's due.
• Each reminder goes to everyone who can approve the current step. It's the Approval Reminder alert, which approvers get by email once their email is on.
• After the last reminder, admins are alerted once. Administrators and anyone with Approval Policies → Override & re-route get the Approval Escalated alert, so they can override or re-route the request. Reminders then stop.
• Nothing is ever rejected automatically. The request keeps waiting until someone acts on it.
• When a request moves to its next step, the count starts again for that step's approvers.
• If everyone who could approve the current step leaves your account or loses their role, admins are alerted that nobody is left who can approve it. This happens even with reminders off.
• Reminder changes apply straight away, including to requests already waiting.

The Approval card on the document shows a line such as Reminder sent · 3h ago (1 sent). Once a request has been escalated, the card shows No decision · 3 reminders sent · escalated to admins and the date.

Keep reminders on

A request that nobody looks at doesn't fail, it waits. Reminders, with approver email on, are what turn a forgotten request into one that gets decided or reaches an admin.

How the re-approval tolerance works

The Re-approval row is on the Purchase orders tab only. Its note reads …or moves into a higher tier. Changing the supplier or currency, or adding lines, always asks again.

With a 5% tolerance and a purchase order Priya Shah approved at $8,000:

Change after approval	Asks for approval again?
Total drops to $7,500	No. A lower total never asks again.
Total rises to $8,300 (3.75% more)	No. It's within 5%.
Total rises to $8,500 (6.25% more)	Yes. It's more than 5%.
Total rises to $10,500	Yes. It moved into the Over $10,000 tier, so Sam Turner approves it.
Supplier or currency changes, or a line is added	Yes, whatever the tolerance.

The tolerance applies to every approved purchase order from the moment you save it. Deposits and bill payments have no tolerance: any increase to an approved amount asks again. For what's blocked while a purchase order waits for approval again, see How re-approval works.

If Save shows an error

Message	What to do
Hours: 1–720 hours	Enter whole hours from 1 to 720, or clear the box to turn reminders off.
Enter a percentage from 0 to 100	Enter a re-approval tolerance from 0 to 100.

For every other message, see Validation messages.

Next steps

• Get approval requests by email, so reminders reach approvers' inboxes.
• Override or re-route a stuck request, for admins who get an escalation.
• Hand off approvals while you're away
• How re-approval works
• Change or turn off a policy, for what Save & re-route all does.