Purchase order approval system
- Budget left if this is approved
- $3,800
- Cost a unit
- $400
- Share of the remaining budget this takes, percent
- 24
Nothing in these worksheets is a figure we found somewhere. Every number comes from the inputs you enter and the method stated on the page: the discount comes off the line total before tax, tax is charged on the goods and not on shipping, and the budget check is your own remaining balance less your own estimate. The defaults are a worked example, not a recommendation and not a benchmark.
A purchase order approval system decides who may commit the business to what, and it fails in two opposite directions. Route everything to one person and you have a bottleneck that people work around, usually by ordering first and telling them afterwards. Let everyone approve their own requests and you have a policy with no control in it. The way through is a threshold: routine spend approves quickly, larger spend needs a second pair of eyes, and the rule is written down once rather than negotiated per request.
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Set a threshold you would actually enforce
The number should be small enough that a genuine mistake is caught and large enough that ordering stationery does not need a meeting. The useful test is what size of unexpected invoice would have annoyed you last year; that figure is usually close to the right threshold.
Show the approver the budget, not just the amount
Approving $1,200 means something different against $5,000 remaining than against $1,300. On the worked example the request leaves $3,800 and takes 24% of the line, and both of those are more useful to the approver than the request total on its own.
Record the approval on the order, not in an inbox
An approval that lives in a reply-all thread cannot be found in nine months when the question is asked. It belongs on the record with the approver's name and the date, which is also what makes the control provable rather than merely claimed.
Will it do what you need for Purchase order approval system?
Tell us how your business orders things today and what keeps going wrong with it, and we will tell you plainly whether Requly fixes it.
Purchase order approval system: common questions
How many approval levels does a small business need?
Usually two: routine spend approved by the requester's manager or by anyone with authority, and spend above a threshold needing a second approver. More levels than that get bypassed.
What if the approver is away?
Name a deputy in advance and record when the deputy acted. Approval systems break at holidays, and the workaround people invent is ordering without approval, which is worse than a slightly loose rule.
Should the approver see the whole budget?
They should see the remaining balance on the line the request draws from. That is the number that makes the decision, and it is what turns an approval from a rubber stamp into a judgement.
Requly Pro
Keeping the orders
The worksheet prices one order on one day. Pro remembers it: the requisition it came from, the number it was issued under, who approved it, what has been received against it and which invoice it was matched to.
- Download the order as a file you can send to a supplier
- Send the order out without the Requly watermark on it
- Come back to this order with the figures still in it
- Put your own logo on the orders your suppliers receive
- Take every requisition and order out at once, as a file
- Send the purchase order to the supplier without leaving the record
- Not used by Requly: nothing here takes a payment from your suppliers
- Match orders against the bills your books already carry
$49per month, whole team
Start Requly Pro PricingRequly Pro is $49 a month and renews on the same date each month at the same $49 until you cancel. There is no introductory rate, no minimum term and no automatic step up in price. If the price ever changes you keep the price you signed at.