How to approve a procurement request¶

An employee lists the products to supply in a Procurement request and submits it. When the required approvals are given, Viindoo applies the replenishment rules of each product and creates the draft purchase orders (requests for quotation) to the vendors set on the products, without any other click. The Launch Procurement button stays on the approved request to run the procurement again after you fix a product.

Who	Any internal user creates the request; the approvers approve it (Approvals ‣ Team Approver or higher); a user with Inventory ‣ User can launch 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 where to buy it. Open the product and, in the Purchase tab, add the vendor with its price and delivery lead time.

The vendors of a product in the Purchase tab

The Buy route comes from the warehouse (the Buy to Resupply option of the warehouse is on by default), so you do not tick it on the product. If a line must follow another route, the approver can choose it in the Stock Routes column of the line.

If no rule is found for a product when the procurement runs, 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 the procurement again.

How do I create a procurement request?¶

Go to Approval ‣ Overview and click Create Request on the Procurement card.
Fill in the request, add a line for each product, then click Save.
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, no purchase order is generated.
Destination Warehouse	The warehouse that receives the products, on each line.	The receipt goes to the wrong warehouse.
Stock Routes	Optional. The routes the procurement must follow for the line.	A route that does not fit the product makes the procurement fail with a message in the chatter.

How do approvers approve it?¶

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

The Approvers tab of a procurement request

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

The Approve button of a procurement request

When all required approvals are done, the request is Approved and the procurement runs by itself. The buttons at the top of the form count what Viindoo generated: Purchase Orders and References.

An approved procurement request with the Purchase Orders and References buttons

How do I get the purchase orders?¶

Click Purchase Orders to open the requests for quotation generated by this request.
The purchasing employee checks the price and the delivery date, then confirms each order.

How do I run the procurement again?¶

Use Launch Procurement only when a line could not be supplied (the chatter of the request says why) and you have fixed the product. Click it and confirm. Only users with the Inventory ‣ User access right can do it.

The confirmation window of Launch Procurement

Warning

The procurement is run for every line of the request. Lines that already generated an order add their quantity again to the draft purchase order, so launch it again only after a failure.

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.