Defining approval plans

An approval plan determines the approvers who are responsible for resolving the approval rule violations triggered by a quote.

The approvers in an approval plan form an approval group, which is the set of users from specified teams and user groups who must review and approve any pending approval holds from an approval rule violation.

If an approval rule is violated, one or more approval groups may need to review the quote. For example, a pricing rule violation on a quote might require approvals from both the finance approval group and the sales approval group. In this example, approvers from both the finance approval group and the sales approval group must approve the quote. If the finance approval group consists of an accountant and an analyst, and the sales approval group consists of a sales representative and a sales manager, the quote must be approved by the sales representative, sales manager, accountant, and analyst. The order in which approvers approve the quote is determined by the approval sequence.

Enterprises support multiple approval plans, which allow you to define different hierarchies of approvers for different types of approval rule violations. For example, a sales approval group can be configured for discount rule violations and a legal approval group can be configured for legal rule violations. A quote can violate multiple approval rules, which can trigger multiple approval groups. Consider a quote with two order lines, where each order line violates a different approval rule. The first order line violates a HazMat rule and the second order line violates a discount rule. In this example, each approval rule violation triggers a different approval group. The HazMat rule violation requires approvals from the HazMat approval group, and the discount rule violation requires approvals from the sales approval group.

Approval plans are configured in Sterling Business Center.