How do I manage my approval flow?

In ProcurementExpress.com we have two different approval flows. Respectively: Manual and Automatic approval. This article outlines the difference between the two and how you can set them up.

Warning: It is not advised to have a combination of the automatic and manual approval routing as this will cause unexpected behavior with your approval flow. So either remove all the approvers from all the budgets, or have approvers on all the budgets.

Article Content: 

1. How do I set approval limits for users?

2. What are the differences between automatic and manual approval routing?

3. How do I set up the Automatic approval flow?

4. How do I set up the Manual approval flow? 

5. How to remove an approver from your system? 

How do I set approval limits for users?

Note: This action can only be done by a Company Admin user.

  1. Go to the "Employees" tab
  2. Click on the name of the user whose approval limit you would like to adjust
  3. Click on "Actions" and then "Edit Account"
  4. Look for the "Approval Limit" field and enter this user's Approval limit
  5. Click on "Save" 
    1. The approval limit is used to determine the order of the approval flow in the Automatic approval route and used to determine if a user can be selected as an approver in the Manual approval route.

What are the differences between automatic and manual approval routing?

Automatic approval flow: 

With the automatic approval flow, the approvers are preset on the budgets in your system. 
Once the PO has been created and sent for approval, it will travel through the chain of approvers on the budget, from the approver with the lowest approval limit up to an approver with a sufficient approval limit and will be approved by each approver in the chain, up until this point. 

Manual approval flow: 

This is the default approval flow that the system is set to when you first sign up. With the manual approval flow, the user will be able to select the approver(s) for the purchase request that they are creating as long as the approver is assigned to the same department and the approver(s) have a sufficient approval limit. 

How do I set up the Automatic approval flow?

Note: This action can only be done by a Company Admin or Finance user.


To do this, you'll add the approvers to each budget. The easiest way to do this is by making the changes on a spreadsheet.
  1. Navigate to the "Budgets" tab
  2. Click "Actions" on the right-hand side
  3. Select the "Export Budget" option
  4. A green bar will appear at the top of the page. After a short while, a download button will appear on the bar, click on it to download the list of budgets
  5. Open the .CSV file in your preferred spreadsheet software
  6. Enter the approver's email address in column "F"
    1. If you need more than one user to be an approver on a budget, separate their email addresses with a comma (no spaces)
  7. Once everything is done, download the file as a .CSV file 
  8. Go back to the Budgets tab in ProcurementExpress.com
  9. Click on "Actions" again and select the "Import Budget" option
  10. Drag-and-drop the file onto the "Choose File" button OR click on the "Choose File" button and select the file from your computer.
  11. Click on the "Upload" button
  12. After the screen loads, you will be taken to the "Budget Import Preview". Once you are certain that all is in order click on the "Import" button. 

How do I set up the Manual approval flow? 

Note: This action can only be done by a Company Admin and Finance user.


To do this, you'll remove the approvers from each budget. As long as the approver is assigned to the budget in the user settings and they have an approver role, they'll be available to be selected as an approver on purchase reqeusts. The easiest way to do this is by making the changes on a spreadsheet.
  1. Navigate to the "Budgets" tab
  2. Click on the "Actions" option on the right-hand side
  3. Select the "Export Budget" option
  4. A green bar will appear at the top of the page and after a short while, you will see a download button appear in the green bar. Click on the Download button to download the budget list.
  5. Open the .CSV file in Google Sheets or MS Excel
  6. Delete all the email addresses in column "F"
  7. Download the file as a .CSV file 
  8. Go back to the Budgets tab in ProcurementExpress.com
  9. Click on "Actions" again and select the "Import Budget" option
  10. Drag-and-drop the file onto the "Choose File" option OR click on the "Choose File" option and select the file from where you have stored it on your device.
  11. Click on the "Upload" button
  12. After the screen loads, you will be taken to the "Budget Import Preview". Once you are certain that all is in order click on the "Import" button. 

How to remove an approver from your system? 

Archiving an approver:

  1. Go to Employees, bottom left-hand side of your screen.
  2. Actions -> Archive

This action will archive the employee from the whole system. Their records will still exist, but they won't be able to log in to the system anymore.

What to do with requests waiting for an archived approver.

Pending approvals for the user won't be able to get reassigned. If this is the case, these are your options:

  1. The request can be cancelled and revised. Here's how.
  2. The request can be approved using approval override. Here's how.

Note: This action can only be done by a Company Admin and Finance user.

    Have more questions? Use the Live Chat icon in the bottom right corner or alternatively send an email to support@procurementexpress.com to get in touch with one of our Support Representatives. Have a feature suggestion? We would love to hear from you! Add your feature suggestion on feedback.procurementexpress.com.