Approvals
Route purchase orders, quality documents, and suppliers for sign-off before they take effect, with amount-tiered approval rules.
An approval keeps a document pending until an authorized user approves or rejects it. Per-company approval rules determine whether approval is required and who can decide. rules can use amount tiers.
For example, with a $25,000 purchase-order rule, a $4,000 order can finalize directly to To Receive, while a $40,000 order enters Needs Approval.
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, rules form amount tiers. Each tier runs from its minimum to the next tier's minimum. An order matches the highest threshold its total meets.
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 can decide a request when they are the tier's default approver, are listed under Who can approve, or belong to an authorized group. They also need the relevant module permission: purchasing for purchase orders and suppliers, quality for quality documents, or settings for editing rules.
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. Supplier and quality decisions can carry an optional note; the purchase-order dialog has no note field. 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 withdraw it while it's still pending: on a purchase order that surfaces as Delete (only the requester can delete a pending order).
Carbon notifies the resolved approvers when a request is raised, and the requester when it's decided, over email, Slack, and in-app. When a purchase order is decided, approvers of lower tiers are notified too, so they can see spend that cleared above their level.
Approval is single-step. Carbon selects one rule, and one authorized decision finalizes the document. It does not support sequential stages, parallel sign-offs, quorums, or delegation. Amount tiers select a rule; they are not approval stages.