Sales Order Approval

Most businesses have their own processes of reviewing and approving sales orders. Your organization can configure the approval of specific sales orders—for instance, configuring approval to be required for orders with greater than average amounts or orders that include specific items.

In MYOB Advanced, you can set up as many approvals for specific types of sales orders and invoices as your company's policies require.

Note: The approval of sales orders with the Credit Hold status cannot be performed in MYOB Advanced.

Approval Support for Sales Orders

The functionality of approvals is available only if the Approval Workflow feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form. If the feature is enabled, approvals can be configured for each predefined order type.

Note: If custom order types are configured in your system, approvals can be configured for orders of these types.

If approval is required, when a sales order is taken off hold and saved, the system assigns the order the Pending Approval status and selects an approver for the order, in accordance with the approval map used for approval assignment. Once each of the assigned persons approves the order on either the Sales Orders (SO301000) form or the Approvals (EP503010) form, the order is assigned the Open status. If the approver rejects the order, the order is assigned the Rejected status. If the order is then edited and taken off hold, the system assigns it for approval according to the approval map.

Note: An order with the Pending Approval or Open status cannot be edited.

Configuration of Approval for Sales Orders

To set up the approval of sales orders, you perform the following general steps:

You identify the employees who will be reviewing sales orders of specific types, and plan the workgroups that will include these employees. You also review your organization's hierarchy of workgroups on the Company Tree (EP204061) form, and add any new workgroups needed for approvals.
For each type of sales order, you define the rules for the assignment of specific orders to specific employees. Assignment can be done unconditionally or can be based on the specific properties of the order. You decide whether a single approval is required or multiple approvals are required; if multiple approvals are required, you determine whether they should be performed in parallel or in multiple stages. Also, you specify these rules by using approval maps, which are created on the Assignment and Approval Maps (EP205500) form.
Optional: You create email templates to notify approvers about new sales orders pending approval. Then once an order has been assigned to a specific employee or multiple employees for approval, the system generates a email or multiple emails (based on the template you created) that will be sent to the employees to notify them about the order pending approval. You can create email templates by using the Email Templates (SM204003) form.
On the Approval tab of the Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) form, you do the following:
1. In the SO Type box, you select the order type for orders that require approval.
2. In the Approval Map box, you specify the approval map that has been created.
  Note: You can use the same approval map for any number of order types by adding a row to the table and selecting the approval map in the Approval Map box.
3. On the table toolbar, you select the Require Approval check box.
4. Optional: In the Pending Approval Notification box, you select the email template that has been created.

For details on setting up the approval of sales orders, see To Set Up Approval of Sales Orders.

General Rules for Configuring Parallel Approvals

If your company requires multiple independent approvals for a sales order of a specific type, you can configure parallel approvals. In this case, every sales order of the type is approved by multiple employees in any order; the number of required approvals can depend on the document total, specific customer, or particular item. For example, in a small company, suppose that each sales order must be approved by the CEO, CFO, and CTO independently. In this case, you will need three maps, each of which assigns all orders unconditionally to one of these approvers.

In MYOB Advanced, you will need multiple approval maps, developed by using the Assignment and Approval Maps (EP205500) form, for each sales order type. For each type, the rules can be very simple if all orders are to be approved by the same persons, or more complicated if the approver is selected based on the properties of the order, such as the total amount or the specific products being sold. For more information on creating an approval map, see Managing Assignment and Approval Maps.

Parallel Approval Workflow

After parallel approval has been configured for a specific type of sales order in your system, an order of the type will be processed as follows: When a user saves a new sales order that has the Hold check box cleared on the Sales Orders (SO301000) form, the system uses all the applicable approval maps to select the appropriate approvers for the order and changes the status of the order to Pending Approval.

Note: Orders with the Pending Approval status cannot be edited.

If email templates are specified on the Approval tab of the Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) form, emails are generated and sent to the employees who have been assigned as approvers.

Each approver may approve or reject the order by using the Approvals (EP503010) form. If any approver rejects the order, the system assigns the Rejected status to the order. Rejected orders cannot be removed from the system; they are kept with the history of approvals. If your organization's policies allow rejected orders to be edited, the orders can be modified. Any modification removes all approval records for this order, and the process of approval starts again once the Hold check box is cleared on the Sales Orders form.

Note: If the system doesn't assign an approver to an order while applying the rules of assignment, the order is assigned the Open status. For instance, suppose that you designed an approval map that assigns an approver for orders with amounts greater than $500. If you create an order with an order total of $450, no approver will be assigned to it, and the order will be assigned the Open status once you take it off hold.

The order is assigned the Open status only after all required approvals (those specified on the Approval tab of the Sales Orders Preferences form) have been performed. Open sales orders may be emailed, or printed and mailed, to the customer.

General Rules for Configuring Multistage Approvals

If a sales order of a specific type should be approved sequentially by multiple people (perhaps at different levels of the company hierarchy) in your company, you should configure multistage (sequential) approval of orders.

Note: To configure multistage approval for orders of a specific type, you need to create only one approval map (which assigns approvers sequentially) and specify this map for orders of the type on the Approvals tab of the Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) form.

Consider an example of multistage approvals. You might require that all sales orders in your company be approved in the following stages:

By a senior accountant (with senior accountants belonging to Workgroup1)
By the manager of the accounting department (who belongs to Workgroup2)
For orders above $5000 only, by the CFO (the sole member of Workgroup3)

The assignment rules for multistage approval should be designed so that when an order is saved, it is assigned to Workgroup1 only if its current approval group is none, to Workgroup2 when its current approval group is Workgroup1, and then to Workgroup3 when its current approval group is Workgroup2 and its amount is greater than $5000. For each approval level, you can add conditions if needed (such as whether this order is from a specific customer or requests a specific item, or the document amount exceeds a specific threshold).

For more details, see To Create an Approval Map for Multistage Approvals; the process of creating maps for sales orders is similar to that of creating approval maps for purchase orders.

Multistage Approval Workflow

After multistage approval has been configured in your system, an order of the type will be processed as follows: When a user saves a sales order with the Hold check box cleared, the system applies the specified rules to select the initial approver for the order and changes the status of the order from On Hold to Pending Approval. Orders with the Pending Approval status cannot be edited.

Note: Upon application of the approval map, if an order has not been assigned to anybody, its status changes to Open (Approved). For instance, if only orders with amounts that exceed a specific threshold should be approved, you need to specify conditions that assign only orders with amounts exceeding this threshold. An order that does not exceed this threshold is given the Open status.

Once the initial approver approves the order, the system assigns the next approver, and so forth. Each of the approvers can view the document at the appropriate stage in the approval process on the Approvals (EP503010) form when the order is assigned to her or him.

Note: If an order is first approved by an employee of a workgroup located higher (according to the company tree) than any of the assigned approvers, or by an assigned approver who belongs to an higher group than other approvers, the order is considered as getting all the required approvals at once.

If any of the approvers rejects the order, the system assigns the Rejected status to the order and the order will not appear in the lists for other approvals. Rejected orders cannot be removed from the system; they are kept with the history of approvals. If your organization's policies allow the editing of the rejected orders, the orders can be modified. Any modification removes all approval records for this order, and the process of approval can be started again from the beginning—the assigning of approvers.

Once the last approver approves the order, the status of the order changes to Open. Open sales orders may be sent to the customer via email, printing and mailing, or both methods.

Note: Open orders cannot be edited.