✅ Approval Workflow
Learn how purchase approvals work on Africa Conglomerate — who can approve, how an order reaches an approver, how to approve / reject / delegate, and how to arrange cover when an approver is away. This guide matches exactly what the system does today.
- To approve orders, a member needs a company role that has the “Approve Orders” permission (see Part 1)
- Only org Owners/Admins can create roles and assign them to members
- Your company must be approved and active (see Account Setup)
How Approvals Work
When a B2B buyer submits a purchase order, it does not go straight to the seller. Its status becomes Pending Approval and an approval request is created and assigned to one of your company’s approvers. The order only proceeds once an approver approves it.
By default the workflow is single-step: one authorised approver makes the decision, and every B2B order a member submits is routed to an approver regardless of value. The order amount only sets an informational priority label (Normal → Critical) and, for orders of $10,000 or more, asks the approver to confirm twice.
Organizations that need tiered sign-off can turn on multi-level approval chains, where larger orders must be approved by several people in sequence (for example Team Lead → Finance). That's an optional add-on — see Multi-Level Approval Chains below.
Each request carries a 24-hour SLA indicator so approvers can see what is due or overdue. The SLA is a visual cue only — nothing is auto-approved or auto-escalated when it lapses.
The approval lifecycle at a glance
Part 1 — Decide Who Can Approve
Approval authority is granted through roles, not a separate “approval settings” screen. Anyone whose company role has the Approve Orders permission becomes an eligible approver and starts receiving assigned requests automatically.
Create or edit a role with “Approve Orders”
As an Owner or Admin, go to the sidebar People → Roles & Permissions. Create a role (for example “Purchasing Approver”) or edit an existing one, and tick Approve Orders. Save.
Assign the role to a member
Go to People → Team Members, open the member, and change their role to the one that has Approve Orders. From that moment they appear in the approver pool and can be assigned requests.
Multi-Level Approval Chains Optional
When it's enabled for your organization, you can route orders through tiers of approvers based on order value. Each tier that an order's value reaches must sign, in order, before the order is approved. A rejection at any tier stops the whole chain. If a tier's approver is away, their Absence Cover applies to that tier automatically.
How a chain flows
Building a policy
As an Owner/Admin, open Approvals → Approval Policy and add tiers:
- Level 1 is the entry tier — it applies to every order (its threshold is fixed at 0).
- Each higher level sets an “applies at ≥” amount, in your organization's base currency. Foreign-currency orders are converted before the tiers are chosen.
- Each tier's approver is either a role (anyone holding it) or a specific person.
- Thresholds must increase level by level. When the chain is valid you can Activate the policy — until then it governs nothing.
What approvers see
A multi-level request shows a Level X of N badge in the queue and a tier checklist on the detail page — who has signed, who's next, and the amount each tier engages at. Only the current tier's approver sees the Approve / Reject buttons.
Part 2 — Arrange Cover When an Approver Is Away
When an approver will be unavailable, they set up Absence Cover so their incoming approvals are automatically routed to a colleague for a set period. This is the platform’s dated hand-off mechanism.
Set up an absence-cover period
The approver opens Approvals → Absence Cover and creates a policy with:
- Cover approver — a colleague who also has the Approve Orders permission in this organisation
- Start date and End date — the period you’ll be away
- Reason (optional)
While the period is active, any approval that would go to you is routed to your cover approver instead — no per-order action needed.
Part 3 — Review & Process Pending Approvals
Open your approval queue
In the sidebar, approvers see an Approvals section. Click Approval Queue to open your approver dashboard — it shows requests assigned to you, requests you submitted, and their priority and SLA status.
Open a request to review it
Click a request to open its detail page. You’ll see the full order — items, quantities, prices, the buyer, the total, the priority, the SLA countdown, and a comment thread. Use Add Comment to ask the buyer a question or leave an internal note before deciding (internal notes aren’t shown to the buyer).
Approve, Reject, or Delegate
Only the approver the request is assigned to can act on it. Choose one:
- Approve — tick the confirmation box and approve. The order proceeds to payment and fulfillment. Orders of $10,000+ ask you to confirm a second time.
- Reject — a reason (at least 10 characters) is required; you can also pick a category. The order is rejected and the buyer is notified with your reason.
- Delegate — hand this one request to another eligible approver with an optional note. It then appears in their queue for a decision.
Buyers have one more action of their own: while an order is still pending they can Withdraw it, which cancels the order.
The buyer is notified
After you act, the buyer is notified in-app and by email (subject to their notification preferences):
- Approved — the order moves forward to payment and fulfillment.
- Rejected — the buyer sees your reason on the order.
- Delegated — both you and the new approver are notified.
Part 4 — History & Analytics
Review past decisions
Open Approvals → History to see completed approval requests and their outcomes. Each request also has a Timeline on its detail page showing the key events (created, delegated, approved/rejected) with who acted and when.
If your plan includes analytics, an Approvals → Analytics dashboard shows volume, velocity, and bottlenecks across your approvers.