Functionality has been added to control Approval of PO's based on:

Who can be designated a PO Approver
Who can be the Purchaser on a PO
PO Value
The entered PO line(s) taking the value of costs to date plus outstanding PO's for the selected job / activity code above the budget

Note that all these controls need to be looked at together, and an approach designed which delivers the level of control appropriate to the organisation.

In Maintain People, there are 2 additional fields for Employees:

PO Approver
With this field ticked, the name will appear in the PO Approvers dropdown list in Enter Purchase Orders. Existing data will need to be maintained to make people PO Approvers

PO Approval Limit
The value in this field is the limit for PO approval by this person. When selecting a PO Approver from the dropdown list, the value of the total PO will be checked against the selected Approver's Approval Limit. If the PO value exceeds the limit, a warning will be displayed and another Approver will need to be selected. The allowable approvers list will redisplay listing only those Approvers who qualify to approve this PO

New Purchasing Control Parameter

'Control Overbudget PO'
'PO Purchaser/Approver different'

New Security Admin functions

'Approve Over Budget PO'
'PO Purchaser Own Name Only'
'PO Approver Own Name Only'

Over Budget Control
With Control Parameter 'Control Overbudget PO' set to yes, the value of each PO line is checked for exceeding budget for the selected job / activity code combination, based on the calculation:

Budget - (Costs to Date plus Outstanding PO Costs)
If this value on any line of the PO is <0 (i.e. the budget for this line will be exceeded by this PO), then only People in a Security Admin group which has the Admin function 'Approve Over Budget PO' are allowed to approve the PO. Selection of an Approver will check this calculation and warn if a selected approver does not qualify.

Note that the over budget calculation is done only at the time of approval of the PO. That one line over budget affects the allowed approvers of the whole PO.

"Own Name Only" Admin Functions

The purpose of these is to restrict a person to entering only their own PO's (and not on behalf of others) and only entering their own Approval name (and not approving on behalf of others)
If the user has 'PO Purchaser Own Name Only' Admin Function, then the Purchaser field will default to that user and cannot be changed.
If the user has 'PO Approver Own Name Only' Admin Function, then the Purchaser field will default to that user (provided the user has 'PO Approver' set in Maintain People) and cannot be changed. Note that Over Budget and PO Approval Limit constraints will still apply, which may mean that this PO cannot have approval entered by this person.

Approver to be different to the Purchaser

If the business process requires the Purchaser on a PO to be a different person to the Approver of that PO, then set the new Purchasing Control Parameter - 'PO Purchaser/Approver different' to Yes.
With this set, the Approver on any PO must be a different person to the Purchaser on that PO. When selecting the Approver, if there is a conflict a warning 'Reselect - the Approver must be different to the Purchaser' is displayed.

PO with no lines
You cannot approve a PO with no lines

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