Purchase requisition authorisation rules

Find this screen

Open: Settings > Purchase Orders > POP Requisition Rules.

How to

Add a new authorisation rule

Select Add to create a new rule.
Set up the list of authorisers in the Configure authorisers section at the top. These are the people who can authorise the requisitions which match this rule.
- Select people in the top left-hand list, then use the Add buttons to include them in the top right-hand list of Authorisers included in the rule.
  
  Note: People will only be displayed in the authorisers list if they have access to the Purchase Requisition Authorisation feature in User Access.
- Add Budget Owner if you want to include the named budget owners of a combined nominal budget. Use this if you use combined budgets, and you want requisitions submitted against a budget to be authorised by that budget's owner.
- To include everybody that uses Sage 200, add Anyone.
  
  Note: If you select Anyone, this includes any Sage 200 user account as listed in Sage Provisioning Portal, and may include users who are not assigned to this particular company.
Set up the list of requesters in the Configure Requesters section. This rule will only be applied to requisitions which have been submitted by these people.
- Select people in the bottom left-hand list, then use the Add buttons to include them in the bottom right-hand list of Requesters included in the rule.
- To include everybody that uses Sage 200, select Anyone.
To save the rule, click OK.

Edit an authorisation rule

To change an authorisation rule, select the rule and click Edit.

If you edit or delete an authorisation rule, it will not be applied to any existing submitted purchase requisitions retrospectively.

The change to your rule will only apply to new requisitions that are submitted for authorisation.

Note: If a person included in the rule no longer has access to the company in Sage 200, they will be displayed as Invalid. You will be asked if you want to remove these users from the rule.

Delete an authorisation rule

To remove an authorisation rule, select the rule and click Delete.

If you delete a rule, it will not be applied to any existing submitted purchase requisitions retrospectively.

Any submitted purchase requisitions that are waiting for authorisation under this rule must still be authorised.

Set up alternative authorisers

If you have set up authorisation rules for purchase orders or requisitions, you can choose alternative authorisers who can authorise an order or requisition on behalf of the original authoriser. This is useful when people are not available due to sickness or holiday.

An alternative authoriser can view and authorise any order or requisition that can be authorised by the original person (set in the authorisation rule).
If the alternative authoriser also sets up an alternative, this new authoriser becomes the alternative authoriser for both people.
If the original person is a Super Authoriser who can authorise any order or requisition, the alternative authoriser does not inherit their permission to view and authorise any order or requisition.

Open: Settings > Purchase Orders > Authorisation Out of Office.

See Alternative and out of office authorisers for purchase orders and requisitions.

Useful info

About authorisation rules

All purchase requisitions must be checked and authorised before being converted to purchase orders. The authorisation rules control who can authorise purchase requisitions submitted by a particular person or for a particular budget.

You can set up the authorisation rule to specify:

Who can authorise the requisition (the Authoriser or Authority), who may also be a budget owner.
Who will submit the requisition (the Requester), so the rule can apply to requisitions from particular people.

Example rules

Authorising requisitions against budgets

You can set up authorisation rules so that requisitions for a particular budget must be authorised by that budget owner. When someone enters a requisition, they can choose a budget from a list of your combined nominal budgets.

In your authorisation rule, set the authoriser as the Budget Owner. This means that only those users who have been named as a budget owner for that combined nominal budget can authorise the requisition.

How do I set up the budget?

To submit requisitions against a budget, you must first set up your combined nominal budgets.

Combined nominal budgets are used when you want to:

Set a Sage 200 user as a budget owner.
Group nominal accounts together to report on rolled up totals.
Set an anticipated budget for a group of nominal accounts. Here you would provide a total budget for the selected nominal accounts that is more than total budgets entered for the accounts. This a good way of recording a budget that you don't want to fully allocate yet. For example, you might have an annual budget of £8000 for art materials but only want to allocate £6000 to the budget owner at the beginning of the year.

If you're a maintained school, your budgets are usually allocated at CFR code level. You might set up combined nominal budgets to group the nominal accounts by CFR categories, to help you track that you've allocated your budget correctly.

If you're an academy, your budgets might be allocated at a department level. You could then set up a combined budget for all expense nominal accounts with the same department code and set the head of department as the budget owner.

The combined nominal budget can be set as a single annual value, for the current year and up to 5 future years.

To add a combined nominal budget, open Nominal > Budgets > Enter New Combined Nominal Budget.

See Enter or amend a combined nominal budget.

Set user access to authorisation rules

It is a good idea to control who can access to the screens that allow you to set alternative authorisers and set up authorisation rules.

Note: Restricting access to the Maintain Alternative Authorisers screen doesn't stop people setting up an alternative authoriser for themselves, as they can still use the Authorisation Out of Office screen.

To set user access to these screens:

Open: Settings > Organisational and Financial > User Access.

Choose which users can have access to these features:
- Set alternative authorisers for anyone, for both purchase orders and requisitions, using Maintain Alternative Authorisers.
  Purchase Order Processing > Administration > POP Alternative Authorisers.
- Set purchase requisition authorisation rules.
  Purchase Order Processing > Basic > POP Requisition Rules.

What happens

When I edit or delete authorisation rules

If you edit or delete a rule, the change in the rules will not be applied to any existing purchase requisitions retrospectively.

All existing submitted purchase requisitions must be authorised according to their original rules.

The new rules will only be applied to new or amended requisitions when they are submitted.

Note: You can check if a requisition rule has been changed by checking the audit log. Open Purchase Orders > Adjustments > Authorisation Audit Log.

When people aren't included in authorisation rules

If someone isn't covered by your authorisation rules, then they will not be able to submit any new requisitions for authorisation, and these will instead be saved as drafts.

For example, this could happen if:

You have set up rules to authorise requisitions from each individual person, but have forgot to include a particular person as a requester.
You have set up rules to authorise requisitions by budget, but have not specified a budget owner for a particular budget.