Requisitions

Requisitioning for an account consists of a set of levels organised into a hierarchy. For accounts configured to use requisitioning, a user who wishes to place an order will not necessarily be able to do so without approval. Instead their order will sit at a level waiting for someone to authorise it. Once authorised it moves up in the hierarchy; when it reaches the top it is placed as a purchase order.

To activate requisitioning for an account, an administrator must do the following actions:

  1. Construct the appropriate requisitioning hierarchy, which consists of setting order cost limits and assigning approvers.
  2. Add the "requisitioner" permission to the account.

Optionally, an admin can also set the level at which a particular customer will initially place their requisitions. Some users may require less approval for purchasing than others, and so could place their requisitions at a level closer to the top of the approval hierarchy. Requisitioners that have no assigned requisition level will place requisitions at an account-wide default level.

The hierarchy tree has an associated context menu, accessed by a right mouse click, which can be used to add sub-levels or set the account-wide default requisitioning level.

Approval limits

Each requisition level has two required limiting price values, a minimum and a maximum requisition limit. The maximum limit is a simple threshold, requisitions that cost more than this value will automatically be rejected. This can be set to a very high value if the feature is not required, as the maximum limit must be set for all requisition levels.

Similarly the minimum limit is a lower bound. Requisitions that are cheaper than this limit are automatically approved, and will move up to the next level in the hierarchy or be placed as orders if there is no higher level.

This means that only orders between these two values require approval. By setting appropriate values, an administrator has great control over what can be ordered on an account. They can set up conditions allowing certain orders to go through without requiring approval at all, others to be rejected outright, and the rest to require approval by potentially multiple parties.

Approvers

For requisitioning to work, there must be at least one approver for each level of the hierarchy. If there are no approvers set, then a requisition could conceivably sit at a level in the hierarchy without anyone knowing it is there.

When an approver logs into the site, they will always be presented with a list of requisitions that await their approval, or at least a link to a page containing that list. Optionally, for important approvers or levels, an administrator may also set an option by checking a box that will cause the system to send an email notification to the approver when a requisition is placed.

Note that a user that approves requisitions is not necessarily permitted to place orders themselves, they may in turn require approval from other people. Also, the users who approve at a particular level and those that place requisitions there have no relation to another. Just because a user approves requisitions at a level does not mean that they place their requisitions there, they could place them higher up in the hierarchy or even in a completely different section of it.

If required, it is possible to produce an approver that need not requisition at all. This is done by modifying that user to block the "requisitioner" permission. This can only be done if the administrator user has sufficient privileges to modify both users and accounts.