Requirement
EVersum has expressed their desire to establish an approval process that efficiently manages the purchase invoice, proforma invoice, and payment approval process. The process aims to provide a streamlined and efficient approach for managing the approval process while ensuring appropriate financial control and oversight. Each step needs to be done only by authorized users, and each one of them is assigned different roles according to the process.
Prerequisites
• Need to enable Approval routing in the account for implementing approval workflow.
• Need to do appropriate employee setup and role setup according to the approval flow.
Deliverables
We will be implementing a custom approval workflow to ensure proper scrutiny and authorization of bills and bill payments within the organization. The workflow involves three levels of approval to carefully review and verify bill and bill payment requests before they are processed.
Approval Workflow for Purchase Invoice & Proforma Invoice
We will deploy a workflow for the approval process of Purchase and proforma Invoice in the vendor bill record in NetSuite.
1. Proforma Invoice
To identify the Proforma Invoice, we will add a custom checkbox field named “Proforma Invoice” in the Bill record and the user need to check this field when creating the vendor bill. A bill created with “Proforma Invoice” checked will be considered for the proforma invoice approval process.
First Level – Submit for Approval
• A “Submit for Approval” button will appear in the bill record when the user creates a bill with the “Proforma Invoice” as the invoice category. The creator can click this button to submit the record for verification and Approval.
• On clicking the button, an email will be sent to Daniela Korošec. We will add the memo field value in the vendor bill along with this email which will describe the reason for the purchase.
• We are assuming that Iša Marovt will be the bill creator.
Second Level – Daniela Korošec Approval
• Once the bill is submitted for approval, Daniela Korošec can see the bills waiting for their approval in the reminder portlet in their dashboard.
• She can click on the reminder portlet and navigate to see the bills that are waiting for their approval. The user can open records and either approve or reject the bill.
• Based on the total amount purchased, the remaining approval process will be different. This information about the amount purchased can be fetched from the field “Amount” (Field Id: “usertotal“). The workflow will consist of two levels when the amount is less than or equal to 300 EUR, and three levels when the amount is more.
1. Amount up to 300 EUR If the total amount in the bill is less than or equal to 300, then it will be the last level of approval and no need of higher level (third level) approval for this record. In this case, an email will be sent to Holger by informing that the record has been approved. Also, the approval status will be changed to “Approved”.
2. Amount above 300 EUR
If the total amount in the bill is greater than 300 then the record needs third level of approval before making the payment.
Third Level – Holger Approval
Proforma Invoices with an amount greater than 300 EUR will need the third level of approval from Holger. On approving the record, the approval status will be changed to Approved,” and the bill record will be in the Open status.
2. Purchase Invoice
To identify the Purchase Invoice, we will add a custom body field named “Purchase Category” in the Bill record and it will be a list containing the following values:
1. Monthly fixed & other services
2. Fairs, Travel orders and others
3. Increasing stock of material
4. Consumable material
5. New fixed asset 6. Sub-contractor services
The Invoice category will be updated automatically when creating a bill with the above items, which should be added to the “Expense” tab of the vendor bill.
We will include the six categories in the expense category, and we are conducting this approval procedure under the presumption that a single bill will include expenses from a single category. The approval level and the approver will change according to the invoice category and attached the details below.
1. Invoice Category = Monthly fixed & other services : This category includes the following expense items: (a) Rent (b) Operating costs (c) Insurance (d) Accounting services (e) Telephony (f) Internet (g) IT System Maintenance (h) Education (i) Office Supplies (j) Cleaners (k) Work Clothes On creating a bill with this category, an email will send to Rok Fales and will display the set of bills to be approved in his dashboard. On approving the bill, the bill become opened for creating bill payment. On rejecting the bill, the bill creator needs to resubmit it for approval.
2. Invoice Category = Fairs, Travel orders and others : This category includes the following expense items: (l) Fairs (m)Travel Orders (n) Accommodation (o) Representation (p) IT Licences (q) Student Service (r) Education On creating a bill with this category, an email will send to Holger and will display the set of bills to be approved in his dashboard. On approving the bill, the bill become opened for creating bill payment. On rejecting the bill, the bill creator needs to resubmit it for approval.
3. Invoice Category = Increasing stock of material / Sub-contractor services : When a bill is created with this Invoice category, then the approver will be changed depends on the bill amount.
(a) When the bill amount is less than or equal to 5000 EUR Only one level of approval needs for this bill when the bill amount is less than or equal to 5000 EUR and the approver will be Iša Marovt.
(b) When the bill amount is greater than 5000 EUR Two level of approval needs for this record when the bill amount is greater than 5000 EUR and the first level approver will be Iša Marovt and second level approver will be Holger. The bills which are approved by Iša Marovt will be submitted to Holger for their approval.
4. Invoice Category = Consumable material : On creating a bill with this category, an email will send to Iša Marovt and will display the set of bills to be approved in his dashboard. On approving the bill, the bill become opened for creating bill payment. On rejecting the bill, the bill creator needs to resubmit it for approval.
5. Invoice Category = New fixed asset On creating a bill with this category, an email will send to Holger and will display the set of bills to be approved in his dashboard. On approving the bill, the bill become opened for creating bill payment. On rejecting the bill, the bill creator needs to resubmit it for approval.
Custom Record Setup for Rejection
If either of the record has been rejected by the corresponding approver, it will navigate to a custom record to enter reject reason. We will be creating a custom record for saving the reject reason and the record having following fields.
• Record
• Rejected User
• Rejection Reason
In case the corresponding approver rejects the records during the approval process, it will be directed to a customized record to input the reason for the rejection. The rejection reason will be attached under the subtab in reject records. The reject record will create every time a record gets rejected. In approval stages, the approver can Reject the record by clicking on the “Reject” Button.
• Once the user clicks the “Reject” button, it navigates to the Reject reason record.
• The approver can enter the Reason for rejection and submit the Reject reason record.
• After submitting the Reject reason record, the Reject reason record will attach to the corresponding record.
• The custom approval status will change to “Rejected”.
• The record goes to the previous level of approval when we reject the record from any level.
• The “Resubmit For approval” button will appear in the corresponding record.
• In case of rejection the user can update the record and click the “Resubmit For approval” button to submit the record for the approval process.
• Once the user clicks the “Resubmit For approval” button, the custom approval status will change to “Submitted for approval” and the record goes to next level of approval and the approval process will continue.
Reminder Portlet
Reminder searches will be created for all roles to find the records waiting for their approval. The user can add the reminders in the dashboard by clicking set up on the reminder portlet.
Assumptions
• The entire procedure will function based on user-specific manner.
• We will consider the bills with “Proforma Invoice” field as checked for the approval process.
• When the approver rejects the record, it always goes to the previous level of approval.
• The reminder portlet option is user-specific, only the specified user will get notified in the approval process.
• The custom approval status field will be disabled, and the user cannot be able to modify the status.
• Workflow and Script will be working only for the newly created records and not for existing records.
• The approval will be based on the transaction currency used in the bill and bill payment record.