Purchase approvals that no longer wait
Supplier invoices waited two weeks or more before being approved. They now reach the right approver as soon as they are created.
The situation
When I joined, I did not know Business Central. Supplier invoices were approved in batches: every two weeks, one person compiled each approver's pending invoices and emailed them the list.
An invoice could wait 14 days or more before being opened, and the approval history was scattered across emails.
The process
Beforeevery two weeks
- Invoice created
- Waits in a pile
- Summary emailed by hand
- Approved 14 days later, or more
Afteras it happens
- Invoice created
- Approver assigned at once
- Approved in the ERP
- Full audit trail
What I did
- Learned the ERP well enough to become the site’s administrator: configuration, user issues and improvement requests.
- Designed approval workflows for three document types: purchase orders, purchase invoices and quotations.
- Set each invoice to reach the right approver the moment it is created.
- Aligned the rules with accounting and internal control.
The result
- of waiting removed
- 14+ days
- document flows automated
- 3
- manual summary emails left
- 0
Approvals now happen as documents arrive, and every decision is traceable in the system.