Approval rules — who must approve what

Approval rules decide which documents need a second person's approval before they are recorded: bill payments, expenditures, purchase orders and journal entries, by amount band. They are how you enforce authorisation limits ("anything over ₦500,000 needs the finance manager") and segregation of duties.

With no rule, nothing changes — documents save and post as they always have.

Before you start

• You need Company Settings permission.
• Decide who your approvers are. The simplest is to tick Can approve bill payment on their user record (Setup → Users → Approval / Billing), or use a permission everyone in a role already has.

Steps

1. Go to Setup → Approval Rules and click New rule.
2. Name it so people recognise it in requests, e.g. Large bill payments.
3. Applies to — Bill payment, Expenditure, Purchase order or Journal entry.
4. From amount / Up to — the band the rule covers. Leave Up to blank for "and above". Use 0 to cover every amount.
5. Who approves:
   • Bill-payment approvers — users ticked on their user record.
   • Anyone with a permission — e.g. everyone with Journal Entries.
   • Administrators.
   • Specific people — tick them in the list.
6. Check the line Reaches: … — these are exactly the people who will be able to approve. If it says it reaches nobody, fix it before saving.
7. Tick An approver may release their own documents only if you accept that (it is recorded as self-approved on every such document).
8. Save rule.

Tips

• Use bands to escalate: a rule from 0 to 499,999 for supervisors, and another from 500,000 with no upper limit for the managing director. When bands overlap, the rule with the higher From amount wins.
• Switch a rule off instead of deleting it if you may need it again.
• Changes affect documents saved from now on. Requests already waiting keep their rule; if you delete the rule, administrators can decide them.
• Amounts are compared on the document's total: gross for bill payments, including tax for expenditures and purchase orders.

Common problems

• Requests sit unapproved → The rule reaches nobody, or only the person raising the document (who cannot approve their own). Check Reaches on the rule.
• A clerk's bill payment went straight through → Its amount is below every band, or the clerk is an approver on a rule that allows self-approval.
• People cannot see the Approvals page in the menu → The menu shows it to users with bill-payment, expenditure, purchase or journal permission. Anyone can still open it from a notification or at /approvals.