Approvals

Here you can find an overview of the Emporix Approval Service, along with its features and benefits. The approval process is relevant only for the B2B customers.

Purpose

An approval process is necessary for the organization to define the correct purchasing flow and budget limits. Depending on the role of the customer who creates an order, some orders are approved automatically, while others require additional confirmation from eligible users.

The approval flow starts when a customer uses the storefront to add products to the cart.

User groups

To improve management of the approval process, the following roles are introduced:

• Customer Administrator - B2B_ADMIN

• Purchaser of the Customer - B2B_BUYER

• Material Manager - B2B_REQUESTER

B2B Admin

When the customer is assigned to the admin B2B_ADMIN group, the checkout triggers in a standard way. There is no additional step to create an order.

B2B Buyer

When the customer is assigned to the admin B2B_BUYER group, the approval service checks if the customer has permission to trigger the checkout.

• If the cart price is within the company limit, the customer can finish the order themself.

• If the cart price exceeds the company limit, the customer creates the approval for the customer approver - the approvers list can be fetched from the approval service. When the approval is created, the approver can finish the checkout process and create the order.

B2B Requester

B2B requester is a material manager. When the customer is assigned to the admin B2B_REQUESTER group, the approval service checks if the customer has permission to trigger the checkout. The requester customer cannot trigger the checkout, so the approval needs to be created.

• If the cart price exceeds the company limit, the customer can only assign a customer approver, who belongs to the B2B_ADMIN group.

• If the cart price is within the company limit, the customer can only assign a customer approver, who belongs to the B2B_ADMIN or B2B_BUYER groups.

Working with approvals

When the approval is created in the storefront, the approving customer receives an email with a notification that the approval request was created. If any additional comments were provided by the requester, they are also sent to the approver.

After a customer creates an approval, the following data is automatically populated:

• Requester - the value is populated based on a customer token.

• Approver - firstName and lastName values are populated based on the customer ID.

• Resource - refers to an order, the value is populated based on cart data.

• Expiry date - by default the expiry date is set to +10 days from the day when the approval was created.

• Approval status - the status is set to PENDING by default.

Within the existing approval, the following scenarios are possible:

• A requester can update data from the approval: comments, details, delivery windows, statuses. The update is possible only when the approval status is PENDING.

• A requester can change status to CLOSED.

• An approver can change status to the APPROVED or DECLINED.

• After expiry date, the approval status is changed automatically to EXPIRED.