How to approve a procurement request

An employee lists the products to supply in a Procurement request and submits it. After the approvers approve it, Viindoo launches the procurement once: it applies the replenishment rules of each product and creates the draft purchase orders (requests for quotation) to the vendors set on the products. A user with the Inventory ‣ User access right can click Launch Procurement to launch the lines that were not launched yet.

Who	Any internal user creates the request; the approvers approve it (Approvals ‣ Team Approver or higher); a user with Inventory ‣ User launches the procurement again.
App	Approval, with Purchase and Inventory

Before you start

• Install OmniApproval™ - Procurement Approvals: go to Approval ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings, tick it in the Integration block and click Save. See How to install, upgrade and uninstall apps and modules. Viindoo creates the approval type Procurement.

• Set who approves the type: Manage Approval Types.

How do I prepare the products?

For every product the request can contain, Viindoo needs to know how to supply it.

1. Open the product and, in the Purchase tab, add the vendor with its price and delivery lead time.

2. In the Inventory tab, tick the route Buy, then save.

If no rule is found for a product when you launch the procurement, Viindoo does not stop: it writes the message No rule has been found to replenish … in the chatter of the request so that you can fix the product and launch again.

How do I create a procurement request?

1. Go to Approval ‣ Overview and click Create Request on the Procurement card.

2. Fill in the request, add a line for each product, then click Save.

3. Click Submit. The request moves to To Approve.

Field	What it does	If it is wrong
Title	Name of the request, for example Furniture for the new meeting room.	A vague title makes the request hard to find.
Employee	The requester. The approvers are found from this employee.	See How to create and approve a request.
Receipt Date	The date by which you want to receive the products.	Too early a date makes the generated orders late.
Product, Quantity	What to supply and how many.	Without a vendor and the Buy route, no purchase order is generated.
Destination Warehouse	The warehouse that receives the products. Filled in with the company’s warehouse.	The receipt goes to the wrong warehouse.

How do approvers approve it?

Open the Approvers tab to see who approves and in which order.

Each approver opens the request from the activity in the top bar or from Approval ‣ Approval Request and clicks Approve; use Refuse to refuse. The steps are the same as in How to create and approve a request.

When all required approvals are done, the request is Approved and Viindoo launches the procurement of its lines once by itself. The button Launch Procurement stays available on the approved request.

How do I launch the procurement?

1. Check the result of the automatic launch. To launch again, for example after you added the missing vendor of a product, click Launch Procurement and confirm. Only users with the Inventory ‣ User access right can do it.

2. Viindoo creates a procurement group and, for each vendor, a draft purchase order. The buttons at the top right of the request count them.

3. Click Purchase Orders to open the requests for quotation. The purchasing employee checks the price and the delivery date, then confirms them. The Source Document of each order is the number of the request.

Launching again

Launching the procurement runs once: approval launches the procurement of the lines by itself, and Launch Procurement never duplicates what was already generated. Only a line whose procurement was not launched yet, for example a line that had no vendor and has one now, is launched. When every line was already launched, Viindoo does nothing more and tells you with the message The procurement of the request … was already launched for all its lines. The existing purchase orders stay unchanged.

How do I finish the request?

When the products are received, click Mark as Done. The employee who sent the request, the employee’s manager (as an approver) or an Approvals ‣ Administrator can do it. Follow the receipts and the vendor bills from the purchase orders.

See also

Related articles:

• Approval Overview

• How to create and approve a request

Optional modules:

• Purchase

• Inventory