Oracle R12 Purchasing – Document Approval Methods:

Oracle R12 Purchasing – Document Approval Methods:

Oracle Purchasing provides three methods of document approvals:

1. Employee / Supervisor Approval Method

2. Approval Hierarchy Method

3. Approval Management Engine (AME)

What approval method is to be used?

Oracle Purchasing checks the setup in the Financial Options screen, Human Resources tab, “Use Approval Hierarchies” check box.

If the checkbox is checked, purchasing will use the Approval Hierarchy method.

If the checkbox is unchecked, purchasing will use the Employee Supervisor Hierarchy method.

Employee / Supervisor Approval Method:
This hierarchy is defined by using the employee / supervisor relationship.

To Implement this approval methods, jobs are to be defined. Job to be defined in the approval group and based on the approval limits from approval group the document will be either approved or forwarded to the employee’s supervisor.

The supervisor of an employee is defined on the Assignment region of the Employee form. If the purchase order entered by the employee exceeds the approval limits, the purchase order is forwarded onto the employees’ supervisor, as defined on the Employee form.

Approval Hierarchy Method:
This hierarchy is defined using the Position relationship.

To Implement this approval method, positions are to be created, build the position hierarchy.

The hierarchy for positions is defined on the Position Hierarchy form.

Each position has approval limits, so when a purchase order exceeds the limits of the position, the purchase order is forwarded onto the next position in the Hierarchy.

Oracle Purchasing utilizes the positions as a roadmap to determine how and where documents will be routed once the approval process has been initiated.

When this setup is completed or changed, “Fill Employee Hierarchy” concurrent program should be run to initiate the effect of the new hierarchy.

Approval Management Engine (AME)

Approval Management Engine (AME) is a self-service web application.

AME lets users define business rules governing who should approve transactions that originate in other Oracle applications. It mainly provides the following services to the calling application:

1. Centralized rules repository for defining and sharing rules.

2. It also provides the history of approval status.

3. Based on specific transaction date, it provides an execution engine to evaluate the rules.

4. It provides the List Management capabilities.

In Oracle Purchasing, the following restrictions applies to use AME functionality:

1. Current / Pending Approvers information in Action History is not supported in Forms. This information is available in the Buyer Worker Center Action History only.

2. AME cannot be used for planned purchase orders and purchase order releases.

3. AME cannot be used for local blanket purchase agreements. If want to use the AME feature, then use for global blanket purchase agreements.