Question

PO Approvals

  • 10 March 2021
  • 8 replies
  • 1017 views

As a result of a change in the organisation I have a director who is now the senior approver, and cannot approve POs sent through to him. The buyer who raised the PO has this person listed as an authorised user but when the approver attempts to click the approver checkbox he gets a message saying he has exceeded his limit and it should be approved by - and his own name.

Can someone help because I’m tearing my hair out with this.


8 replies

set the PO limit to 0.00 in the Buyer setup for the approver.  Go To Materials Management --  Purchase Management -- Setup and click on “Buyer” to search for the approver.

Already done

Userlevel 3

Remove the Director from the authorized buyer who raised the PO.  You could be in a circle, that the Director is reverting to the original buyers limit, when he is attempting to approve the PO.

Userlevel 3

If the Director is the top level for PO Approvals, the Approval Person field on the Buyer Maintenance screen should be blank or empty.

If the Director has a limit and the CFO is the top level for PO Approvals, the Directors set-up is as follows:

the Approval Person field should contain the CFO’s name.

the PO Limit field should be set to the limit of spend the Director has.

I’m having this same issue right now, and it’s driving me CRAZY. 

I’ve already done the suggested steps above, except when I removed the approver from being an authorized user on that buyer’s account - I was met with the “You’re not authorized to maintain purchase orders for this buyer” message.  So I don’t think you can remove the approver from being an Authorized user on the PO, but I’m not that familiar with Purchasing.  I’ve never had any issues with the approval process until now.  As soon as I raised the limit for one of my buyers and changed her Approver, now any of those POs over the limit don’t seem to be able to get approved...just keep getting that circular message box every time I try to approve.  

Has anyone figured this out?

Remove the Director from the authorized buyer who raised the PO.  You could be in a circle, that the Director is reverting to the original buyers limit, when he is attempting to approve the PO.

But doesn’t doing that mean that the approver will get the message “You are not authorized to maintain purchase orders for this buyer” now when he attempts to approve?  

Or if not, what could I be doing wrong that I do see that message after removing the approver from being an authorized user to the Buyer’s acct?

Userlevel 4

Could the PO be unapproved, then the buyer changed to a different one, then the approval process attempted again?  Often “Buyer” is interpreted as an individual user, and named accordingly.  But the Epicor structure allows these entities to be purchasing departments or other collections of users.

 

If it’s necessary to create “conversion buyer” groups of people for the sole purpose of getting the POs approved for this personnel change, they can be made inactive after the process is complete.

Userlevel 3

So this is our scenario, and it works fine.

Individual Buyers have a limit of $0.01, and their approver is the Department Manager, who is set-up as a Buyer with a limit of $30,000.  This individual is an Authorized User on all of the Buyers.

The Department Manager’s approver is our VP of Operations, who is set-up as a Buyer with a limit of $100,000.  This individual is an Authorized User on the Dept. Managers’ Buyer ID only.

The VP of Operations’ approver is the CEO, who is set-up as a Buyer with a limit of $0.00.  The CEO is not an Authorized Buyer on any of the other Buyer ID’s.

You scenario, if I have it correct:

So, you changed the limit on Buyer A to $1,000, and the other Buyers (B, C, D) all have a limit of $250.

When the Dept. Mgr. goes to approve the PO, they are getting a message they cannot maintain the PO?

Are you using the PO Approval process or just going into the PO and clicking on the Approved checkbox?

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