Automatic approvals

Automatic approvals occur when an approver belongs to multiple approval groups.

When the approver approves the quote, the approver's status changes to "Approved" for the current approval group and for all associated approval groups. Additionally, the statuses of all lower-level approvers in all associated approval groups automatically change to "Approved". Automatic approvals ensure that an approver approves a quote only once. The following example describes a basic scenario for automatic approvals in which one approver belongs to multiple approval groups. The second example describes a more complex scenario in which multiple approvers belong to multiple approval groups.

Example 1: two approval groups contain the same approver

In this example, the sales manager belongs to two approval groups. The following table shows the order approval table before the sales manager approves the quote.

Table 1. Order approval table: before the sales manager approves the quote
Approval key	Sequence	Team	User group	Status	Approval group key
A1	1	Sales	SalesRepresentative	Pending Immediate	AG5
A2	2	Sales	SalesManager	PendingApproval	AG5
A3	3	Finance	Accountant	PendingApproval	AG5
A4	4	Shipping	WarehouseGroup	PendingApproval	AG5
A5	1	Sales	SalesManager	PendingImmediate	AG6
A6	2	Marketing	Analyst	PendingApproval	AG6
A7	3	Marketing	SeniorAnalyst	PendingApproval	AG6

The following table shows the order approval table after the sales manager approves the quote.

Table 2. Order approval table: after the sales manager approves the quote
Approval key	Sequence	Team	User group	Status	Approval group key
A1	1	Sales	SalesRepresentative	Approved	AG5
A2	2	Sales	SalesManager	Approved	AG5
A3	3	Finance	Accountant	PendingImmediate	AG5
A4	4	Shipping	WarehouseGroup	PendingApproval	AG5
A5	1	Sales	SalesManager	Approved	AG6
A6	2	Marketing	Analyst	PendingImmediate	AG6
A7	3	Marketing	SeniorAnalyst	PendingApproval	AG6

When the sales manager approves the quote, the A5 and A2 approval keys move to "Approved" status. In this example, the sales manager approves the quote before the sales representative approves the quote, so the A1 approval key also moves to "Approved" status because the sales manager has a higher sequence number than the sales representative.

Example 2: two approval groups contain the same approvers

In some cases, different approval groups contain the same approvers in different approval sequences. When this scenario occurs, the approval process starts with the approval group that contains the creator of the quote at the lowest level of the group. In this example, the Sales Approval Group and the Finance Approval Group contain the same approvers in different approval sequences. The sales representative has created the quote and is assigned to the lowest level of the Sales Approval Group.

Table 3. Sales approval group
Approval number	Sequence	Team	User group	Predecessor
AP1	1	Sales	SalesRepresentative
AP2	2	Sales	Sales Manager	AP1
AP3	3	Finance	Accountant	AP2

Table 4. Finance approval group
Approval number	Sequence	Team	User group	Predecessor
AP1	1	Finance	Accountant
AP2	2	Sales	Sales Manager	AP4
AP3	3	Sales	Sales Representative	AP5

The following order approval records are generated and each approval listed below is required:

Table 5. Order approval table for automatic approvals
Approval number	Sequence	Team	User group	Approval group
AP1	1	Sales	Sales Representative	Sales Approval Group
AP2	2	Sales	Sales Manager	Sales Approval Group
AP3	3	Finance	Accountant	Sales Approval Group
AP4	4	Sales	Sales Representative	Finance Approval Group

Because the sales representative is assigned to the highest level of the Finance Approval Group, the accountant and sales manager are not required to approve the quote for the Finance Approval Group. Order approval records are not generated for these two approvers. If the accountant approves the quote first, automatic approvals occur for the sales representative and sales manager.