What to do first
Raise a request. Say what it is for, how much it is, which project it belongs to if it belongs to one, and which vendor it is going to.
The queue
Across the top: how many requests are waiting on a decision, the longest wait, how much is committed, and how much has been paid out of this workspace.
The wait is the figure that matters. A four day wait on a steel order is a nine day slip on a foundation pour, and the wait is the only part anybody can still do something about.
A wait is counted from when the request was raised, through every step of the approval, and is not restarted when the first approver clears it. A request that took three days to reach the second approver and two more to be signed waited five days.
Who may approve
Authority comes from the amount rather than from a named person, so a request does not stall because one individual is on leave.
- Up to 500,000: a manager, level 2 and above.
- Up to 5,000,000: senior management, level 3 and above.
- Above that: an executive, level 4.
Requests you are able to decide on appear as approvals in your My Work.
One approver or two
A workspace chooses between two shapes.
Single approval, gated on the amount. This is the default.
A two step chain, where a request goes first to the requester's own manager, who knows whether the thing is actually needed, and then to a final approver who signs every payment that leaves the company. Two people asking two different questions, in order.
A workspace can also name a finance officer. They are not an approver. They are told when a request is fully approved, because the gap between "approved" and "somebody knows to pay it" was otherwise crossed by the requester walking over to say so.
Vendors
Every supplier the company uses, what has been committed to them, and what has been paid.
A vendor with three declined requests against it is suspended automatically. Three rather than two, because two can be bad luck on a fast moving order, and rather than four, because four is a quarter of a year of tolerating a supplier nobody trusts.
How it connects
- A request can name a project, and approved spend becomes that project's spend lines.
- Approvals waiting on you appear in My Work.
- Committed and paid figures feed Finance and Insights.
Common questions
I approved something and nothing happened. Check whether your workspace uses a two step chain. Your approval may be the first of two.
Why can I not approve my own request? Because the amount decides who may approve, and the requester is not the decider.
A vendor is suspended and we need them. Suspension follows from declined requests. Deciding a request differently is what changes it, not a switch on the vendor.