When you place an order, it may have to go through an approval process. A designated person (an approver) has to sign off on the order. Sometimes, more than one level of approval is required, for example, by a series of managers. Each approver is associated with a level of approval (with 1 being the lowest level). So if three levels of approval are required, a level 1 approver must first sign off on the order, then a level 2 approver, and finally the level 3 approver. Not until all three sign-offs are complete is the order considered approved.
An order may require approval because of its price, for example, it is above a certain amount. Sometimes if you remove an expensive item from the cart you can avoid going through the approval process.
Some orders may require approval if you enter a particular cost center or accounting code as your payment method.
In addition, a product that you order may require approval. For example, some products like corporate reports may require scrutiny and approval to ensure their contents are correct; other products may have limited distribution so require approval when you order them. Product approvals are not tied to price.
When an order you place requires approval, the Order Confirmation page shows the Status of the order as Approval required. (The Order Confirmation page is the last step in the checkout process, but you can also open this page by clicking an order number in your order history.) You can click Approval required on the Order Confirmation page to open the Approval Detail window. This lets you see why the approval is required, how many levels of approval are required, and the status of the approvals. You also have the option of contacting an approver by e-mail to follow up on the status of the approval.
Note: The Approval Detail window may list more than one approver at the same level, for example, three approvers may be level 1 approvers. In this case, only one approver at that level has to approve (or decline) the order before it moves onto the next level.
After your order goes through the approval process, you typically receive an e-mail informing you if your order was approved or declined. If the approvers in your organization review the jobs that make up orders, an approver may decline some jobs but approve others. When the result is a mixture of approved and declined jobs in an order, the approver can choose to decline the entire order or can remove declined jobs from the order and just leave the approved jobs in the order. Depending why an order or job was declined, you may want to place the order again so it gets approved the next time.
Notes:
● If some jobs in an order are declined by an approver, they are removed permanently from the order, and will not be listed in your order history. As a result, you will have to create the declined job(s) from scratch to submit another order for approval. Declined jobs will be included in your order history only if the entire order was rejected.
● When an order requires more than one level of approval, you will be notified by e-mail about the status of the approval after the highest level approver is done and the approval process is complete. Only one e-mail is sent to you, not one for each level of approval.
● If you happen to be an approver, and your order needs approving, you will receive an e-mail notification, and you can then approve your own order.