Approvals
Route purchase orders, quality documents, and suppliers for sign-off before they take effect — with amount-tiered approval rules.
An approval holds a document in a pending state until someone authorized signs off. Carbon decides whether a document needs approval — and who may grant it — from per-company approval rules. A rule exists per document type; for it can also carry an amount tier, so a small order goes through untouched while a large one waits for the right person.
Say you set a purchase-order rule at $25,000 with the purchasing managers as approvers: a $4,000 order finalizes straight to "To Receive", but a $40,000 order lands in "Needs Approval" and can't move until a manager approves it.
What can be approved
Three document types support approval, each with its own pending status:
| Document | Pending status | Approved → | Rejected → | Amount-tiered? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purchase order | "Needs Approval" | recomputed (e.g. "To Receive") | "Rejected" | Yes — the order total |
| Quality document | "Draft" | "Active" | stays "Draft" | No |
| Supplier | "Pending" | "Active" | "Rejected" | No |
Only purchase orders use the amount threshold. Quality documents and suppliers match a single rule (its minimum is 0), so for them approval is simply on or off.
Approval rules
Rules live under Settings → Approval Rules, grouped by document type. Each rule:
For purchase orders, several rules form amount tiers — each band runs from its minimum up to the next rule's minimum, and the top tier is "over $X". An order matches the single highest tier its total clears.
There's no global "require approval" switch. A document type needs approval only while an enabled rule exists for it — disable or delete the rule and those documents finalize directly.
Who can approve
A user may decide a request if they're the tier's default approver, are listed directly under who can approve, or belong to one of the groups listed there. Authority is otherwise governed by ordinary module permissions — purchase-order and supplier decisions need purchasing access, quality decisions need quality access; editing rules needs settings access.
Approval authority flows upward only. Someone assigned to the $25k tier can approve a $4k order, but a $4k-tier approver cannot approve a $250k one. Higher tiers cover everything beneath them; lower tiers don't reach up.
The decision
The pending document shows Approve and Reject on its header, each opening a confirm dialog with an optional note. Approving runs the document's transition in one step; rejecting moves it to its rejected state (a quality document simply stays in "Draft"). The person who raised the request can also cancel it while it's still pending.
Carbon notifies the resolved approvers when a request is raised, and the requester when it's decided — over email, Slack, and in-app. For purchase orders, approvers of lower tiers are also notified so they can see spend that cleared above their level.
Approval is single-step, not a chain. One matching rule is selected and one approver's decision finalizes the document — there are no sequential stages, parallel sign-offs, quorums, or delegation. The amount tiers choose which rule applies, not a series of steps a request walks through.