Change or turn off a policy

You can change an approval policy at any time: move a limit, add or remove an approver, or change the rules. New requests follow the new policy straight away. When you save, you decide what happens to requests that are already waiting: they either keep the approvers they started with, or start over under the new policy.

You can also turn a policy off. Pending requests are withdrawn and the documents go back to how they worked before the policy, but your tiers and approvers are kept so you can turn it back on later.

Before you begin

• You need to be an administrator, or have a role with Approval Policies → Edit rules (which includes View rules). Without it, the page shows You can view these rules. Ask an admin to change them.
• Check how many requests are waiting. On each tab of the policy page, a banner such as 2 requests waiting for approval under these rules. counts them, with an Open the approvals queue link.

What a change does to waiting requests

What you change	New requests	Requests already waiting
Tiers, limits, people listed by name, Requires, steps, Self-approval	Follow the new policy.	Keep the tiers and approvers they started with, unless you choose Save & re-route all.
Who belongs to a role that's listed on the policy	Follow the role's members.	Also follow the role's members. Roles are looked up whenever someone acts, so adding a colleague to a role lets them approve waiting requests straight away, and removing someone stops them.
Turning the policy off	Don't need approval.	Are withdrawn.

Documents that are already approved stay approved whatever you change. If someone edits one later, the re-approval rules decide whether it needs approving again. See How re-approval works.

Change a policy

1. Go to Settings → Purchasing → Approval Policies.

2. Click the tab for the policy: Purchase orders, Vendor deposits or Bill payments.

3. Make your changes to the tiers, approvers and Rules.

   In the example, Priya, who is an administrator, raises the first purchase order tier from $10,000 to $20,000, so she and Sam can approve anything up to $20,000.

4. Check the result in Test an amount. It uses your unsaved changes.

5. Click Save at the top of the page.

   If no requests are waiting under the policies you changed, the policy saves straight away.

6. If requests are waiting, the Save approval policy? dialog explains, for example: 2 requests for purchase orders are in progress under the old rules. They keep their current approvers unless you re-route them now — re-routing starts each one over, clearing any approvals already given. Choose one:

   • Save keeps waiting requests on the approvers they started with.
   • Save & re-route all starts every waiting request over under the new policy.
   • Cancel goes back to editing without saving anything.

   What you'll see: the message Approval policy saved.

Save saves the changes on every tab at once. If you changed more than one policy, the dialog lists each one, and Save & re-route all re-routes the waiting requests of each changed policy that's on.

The switches on the Approver email notifications card save as soon as you use them. They aren't part of Save.

If you try to leave the page with unsaved changes, your browser asks You have unsaved changes. Leave without saving?

Choose between Save and re-route

Choose Save when the change is about the future, such as a new tier for larger orders or a different reminder interval, and the waiting requests are with the right people. The dialog appears whenever the policy has waiting requests, even for a change that doesn't affect them, and Save is the safe choice then.

Choose Save & re-route all when waiting requests should move:

• Someone left or stopped approving, and requests are waiting on them. Remove them, then re-route so the requests go to the people listed now.
• You moved a limit, and waiting requests now belong to a different tier. In the example, PO-0065 for $18,650.00 was waiting on Sam alone. After Priya raises the first tier to $20,000 and re-routes, PO-0065 is in the Up to $20,000 tier and waits on Priya or Sam.

Re-routing works like Re-route to current policy on each request. The old request is marked Superseded, a new one starts from the first step with the reason Re-routed, and its approvers get an Approval Requested alert. Approvals already given are cleared, so on a two-step request where step 1 is done, the step 1 approver has to approve again. A request that someone decides while you're saving is left as it is.

To re-route one request rather than all of them, choose Save, then re-route that request from its document.

Turn a policy off

1. Go to Settings → Purchasing → Approval Policies and click the policy's tab.

2. Switch off Require approval for purchase orders, or Require approval for vendor deposits or for bill payments on those tabs.

   The tiers and rules hide, and the card reads Purchase orders don't need approval yet, for example. Your tiers and approvers are kept.

3. Click Save.

4. If requests are waiting, the Save approval policy? dialog warns, for example: Turning off approvals for purchase orders withdraws 2 requests. Those documents go back to how they worked before the policy. Click Save to go ahead, or Cancel.

   What you'll see: the message Approval policy saved. The dot beside the tab's name is grey while a policy is off, and green while it's on.

What happens when a policy is off

• Waiting requests are withdrawn. Each one shows Request withdrawn on its document. Nobody is sent an alert about it, so tell the people who raised them.
• Purchase orders work as they did before the policy. A draft that was waiting for approval goes back to a plain draft, and anyone with the Approve purchase orders permission can approve it and send it. An open purchase order that was held for re-approval is no longer held.
• Vendor deposits that were waiting go back to Draft, and deposits follow your Payment Approvals settings again.
• Bill payments that were waiting go back to where they were before the request, and bills follow your Payment Approvals settings again.
• Approvals already given stay, and every request's history is kept.

Turn a policy back on

1. Open the policy's tab.
2. Switch on Require approval for…. Your earlier tiers, approvers and rules come back.
3. Review them, then click Save.

Withdrawn requests don't come back. Draft purchase orders need approval again before they're opened, so request approval on each one. For deposits and bill payments, submit the payment for approval again.

Turning a policy back on doesn't send email or alerts by itself. Check the Approver email notifications card, which shows again with the tiers, so approvers hear about the next request. See Get approval requests by email.

If something goes wrong

Message	What it means
Fix the highlighted fields on Purchase orders before saving	A field on that tab is incomplete or invalid. The page opens that tab and scrolls to the field. See Policy settings reference.
Couldn't save the approval policy	The save failed. Your changes are still on the page; try Save again.

For every other message, see Validation messages.

Next steps

• Override or re-route a stuck request: for a single request.
• Set up purchase order approvals
• Set approval rules
• Policy settings reference