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Manual processing, especially when it comes to purchase orders can become quite tedious when there are many transactions to process. Thanks to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central you can use a Purchase Order Approval Workflow to make the job easier. Enable your organisation to structure governance policies into workflows, so that payments at a certain nominal level are approved but require further approval once they go over a certain threshold.

Let’s look at each of the the ‘Approver Limit Type’ options available when setting up a Purchase Order Approval Workflow in Dynamics 365 Business Central. You will come across these options on the (+) Add Record Restriction then Workflow Responses page.

Workflow Approval User Setup

Below are the options available with their definitions and examples using the below approval user setup.

User Approver Approval Limit
User 1 User 2 500
User 2 User 3 1000
User 3 Unlimited
User 4 500

Approver Chain 

This option creates approval request entries on all users on the approval hierarchy up to and including the first qualified approver. This will include the approvers whose amount of the document requested is beyond their approval limit. With the above setup, below will be the approval request entries that will be created:

Order Amount Approval Request Entries Notes
Approver ID Status
< 500 User 1 Approved The Order will be automatically released
> 500 and
< 1000
User 1 Approved Only User 2 will approve. Order will be released once approved.
User 2 Open
> 1000 User 1 Approved User 2 will still get an approval request regardless of the Approver limit and will go to User 3 as the last approver. Once User 3 approves, the order will be released.
User 2 Open
User 3 Created

Direct Approver

In this option, only the Direct approver will receive the approval request, regardless of the approval Limit type

Order Amount Approval Request Entries Notes
Approver ID Status
< 500 User 2 Open The approval request will go directly to the Immediate approver of requester (User 1) which is User 2, regardless of the limit / order amount
> 500 and < 1000 User 2 Open
> 1000 User 2 Open

First Qualified Approver

Here the approval request entry is only created for the first qualified approver of the requester.

Order Amount Approval Request Entries Notes
Approver ID Status
< 500 User 1 Approved The Order will be automatically released
> 500 and < 1000 User 1 Approved Only User 2 will approve as he is the First Qualified Approver / approver within the approval limit.
User 2 Open
> 1000 User 1 Approved An approval request will not be created for User 2 as he is not the First Qualified Approver / approver within the approval limit
User 3 Open

Specific Approver

When you select this option, you will be prompted to select a User ID to send the approval request specifically. This will disregard the approval user setup hierarchy and limits and will send only to this user. For below example, we used User 4 as the specific user ID

Order Amount Approval Request Entries Notes
Approver ID Status
< 500 User 4 Open The approval request will go directly to the User 4, regardless of the limit / approval hierarchy. Once approved, the order will be released.
> 500 and < 1000 User 4 Open
> 1000 User 4 Open

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