Purchase Contract Approvals

• 01/10/2024
• 11 minutes to read

The purchase contract approval process is a central part of the Purchase Contracts module. The purpose of contract approvals is to ensure that one person in an organization – the approver – is responsible for periodically checking one or more of the organization's current contracts and making sure that they're up to date, renewed, canceled, or modified – if necessary. You can assign different approvers to different contracts, or have one person approve all contracts – whatever makes the most sense for your organization.

Prior to the release of Continia Document Capture 25.00, this process was known as purchase contract reviews. It has since been overhauled to bring it in line with the approval of purchase invoices. Note that:

• The following Document Capture approval module features are currently not supported: advanced approval, 4-eye approval, and approval flows.
• After upgrading to 25.00, the status of existing purchase contracts that have already been reviewed is set to Released, while all others are set to Approval Needed. Therefore, these need to be reviewed.
• If the Document Approval module isn't activated in your environment, the purchase contracts functionality process is limited. Therefore, many of the features described in this article aren't available.

To use the approval functionality

To start using the approval functionality:

1. Choose the icon, enter Purchase Contracts Setup, and then choose the related link.
2. On the Approval FastTab, switch on the Enable Purchase Contract Approval setting and, if needed, the Enable Purchase Contract Force Approval setting.
3. In the action bar, select Workflows and Users > Continia User Setup and configure the fields Purchase Contract Amount Approval Limit, Unlimited Purchase Contract Approval, and Purchase Contract Approver ID according to your needs.

A purchase contract administrator – typically a controller – initiates the process by either sending one contract or a batch of contracts to the approver, who then approves, rejects, or forwards the contracts. In each approval, the approver can add comments for the controller to consider.

The individual steps of the process are described in detail in the sections below.

To set up an approval administrator

To force approvals, you must be set up as an approval administrator. To do this:

1. Choose the icon, enter Continia User Setup, and then choose the related link.
2. In the list of Continia users, select the ID of the user that you want to make an approval administrator. This opens the Continia User Setup Card.
3. On the General FastTab, enable the Approval Administrator setting.

To send a single contract for approval

As an approval administrator, you can send a contract for approval by following these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Purchase Contracts, and then choose the related link to open the Purchase Contracts page.
2. In the list of contracts, select the one that you want to send for approval.
3. In the action bar, select Approve > Send Approval Request.

This sends the contract for approval, and the Status field on the Approvals FastTab changes to Pending Approval.

To send a batch of contracts for approval

As an approval administrator, you can send a batch of contracts for approval by following these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Purchase Contracts, and then choose the related link to open the Purchase Contracts page.

2. In the action bar, select Home > Send Approval Request Batch... to open the Send purchase contracts for approval page.

3. On the Filter: Purchase Contract Header FastTab, the Next Approval Date filter is added and prefilled with the date range ..[today], which means that all contracts that haven't yet been reviewed and whose Next Approval Date has been exceeded are sent for review in one batch. If necessary, change the prefilled date range.

4. Optional: To add another filter, select + Filter.

5. Optional: To run the batch report at a later time, select Schedule..., and then select a start date/time and an expiration date/time. You can also enter a date formula, which autofills Earliest Start Date/Time.

   Note

   If you select Next Run Date Formula, you must enter a formula in the form of a whole number followed by D (days), WD (weekdays), W (weeks), M (months), Q (quarters), or Y (years) – for example, 2W (two weeks). For more advanced formulas, you can also use the mathematical symbols + and –, or you can enter the letter C (current) as a prefix to any of the previously mentioned time units – for example, CM+10D (current month plus ten days).

6. Select OK when you're done.

This sends all contracts within the specified date range for approval in one batch, and the Approval Status field on the Approvals FastTab changes to Pending Approval for each of the contracts.

Automatic update of approval status

If you make a change to one or more of the following header fields, the status of a purchase contract is automatically set to Approval Needed:

• Vendor No.
• Purchaser Code
• Currency Code
• Price Type
• Invoicing Period Code
• Contract Start Date
• Contract End Date
• Auto Approve Within Variance
• Approval Frequency
• Approval Freq. Date Formula

If you make a change to one or more of the following line fields, the status of a purchase contract is also automatically set to Approval Needed:

• Type
• No.
• Price Type
• Currency Code
• Quantity
• Unit Cost
• Amount
• Status
• Prices Incl. VAT
• Amount Incl. VAT
• Start Date
• End Date
• Invoicing Period

To cancel a contract approval request

To cancel an approval request that you've initiated, follow these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Purchase Contracts, and then choose the related link to open the Purchase Contracts page.
2. In the list of contracts, select the one whose approval you want to cancel.
3. In the action bar, select Approve > Cancel Approval Request.

This cancels the approval. Also, on the Purchase Contract page, the Approval Status field on the Approvals FastTab changes from Pending Approval to Approval Needed.

To submit a contract approval

Once a contract has been sent to you for approval by an approval administrator, you can approve the contract. You can do this in either Business Central or the Continia Web Approval Portal, as described in the following two sections:

Using Business Central

To submit an approval using Business Central, follow these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Purchase Contracts, and then choose the related link to open the Purchase Contracts page.
2. In the list of contracts, in the No. column, select the number of the contract that you want to approve. This opens the Purchase Contract page.
3. Review the contract.
4. In the action bar, select Request Approval > Approve.

This approves the request, and the Approval Status field on the Approvals FastTab changes to Released.

Using the Web Approval Portal

To submit a review using the Web Approval Portal, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to the Web Approval Portal.
2. On the Purchase tab, select Contracts to open the My Pending Approvals page.
3. In the list of contracts for approval, select the one that you want to approve.
4. Approve the contract.
5. In the text field in the upper-right corner, enter your comments, and select Save when you're done. Repeat this step if you have additional comments.
6. In the action bar, select Submit Approval.

This sends your approval to the purchase approval administrator. Also, In Business Central, on the Purchase Contract page, the Status field on the Approval FastTab changes to Approval Submitted.

See also

Creating Purchase Contracts
Creating Contract Invoices
Approving Contract Invoices
Viewing the Purchase Contracts Archive