Approval rule types
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Summary of Approval rule types
Approval rule types in ServiceNow define how approvals are created during the purchase requisition process. Procurement administrators configure these rules to manage internal approval workflows before converting purchase requisitions into purchase orders. This centralized setup supports various organizational approval strategies by generating approval plans based on defined conditions.
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Approval Rule Types and Their Use Cases
- Dynamic Users or Groups: Approvals are dynamically routed to users or groups based on purchasing user attributes, such as the cost center manager. Approvals occur in parallel and adjust automatically depending on the requisition details.
- Managerial Job Code Hierarchy: Approvals are linked to the job codes of users and their managers. This supports both parallel and sequential routing with options for requiring all or any approver in the management hierarchy, depending on purchasing limits and organizational structure.
- Managerial Hierarchy: Approvals depend on the purchasing user's management hierarchy, with routing methods supporting parallel or sequential approvals. Approvals can target all managers, direct managers, or the most senior manager within specified job code limits.
- Specified Users or Groups: Approvals are sent in parallel to predefined users or groups, allowing direct control over who must approve a purchase requisition.
- Cost Center Managers: Designed for purchases allocated across multiple cost centers, this type sends parallel approval requests to each relevant cost center manager. Partial or full approval can be granted per item or line, with approvers notified via email and able to respond through multiple ServiceNow interfaces.
- Self-approved Purchases: For users with sufficient purchasing authority or job code, purchases are automatically approved without explicit tasks. An audit trail records these approvals as “Self Approved.” Administrators can toggle the “Allow automatic approval” flag to require explicit approval tasks from requesters if needed.
Practical Considerations for ServiceNow Customers
- These approval rule types enable you to tailor approval workflows precisely to your organizational needs, whether based on hierarchy, job codes, cost centers, or specific user groups.
- The routing methods (parallel or sequential) and decision criteria (all approvers or any approver) provide flexibility in managing approval complexity and efficiency.
- Email notifications and multiple approval channels (Shopping Hub, Employee Center, Virtual Agent, Mobile) improve approver responsiveness, especially for cost center managers handling multi-cost allocations.
- The self-approval configuration helps streamline requests from authorized users while maintaining an audit trail and the option to enforce explicit approval tasks if required.
- If approvals do not generate as expected, verify the “Allow automatic approval” flag and rule conditions to ensure correct behavior.
Approval rule types determine the methods by which approvals are created during the purchase requisition process.
As a procurement administrator, you can define an approval strategy and create approval rules to approve a purchase internally before it’s converted to a purchase order and sent to a supplier. This is a one-place configuration that can drive any kind of approval process that your organization may need.
| Approval rule type | Description | Example Scenario |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic Users or Groups | Approvals are dynamically created and sent to the specified user or group. Approvals are triggered based on the purchasing user's attributes. The approval routing method is restricted to just sending approvals in parallel. | If approval is required from the purchasing user's cost center manager, then at the time when the purchase requisition is sent to pending approval, the rule looks at the record for the user in the Business Owner field, dot-walks to the referenced cost center, and sends an approval to whoever is the referenced user in the Manager field on the cost center. |
| Managerial Job Code Hierarchy | Approvals are triggered based on the purchasing user's job code and manager's job code. The approval routing method can be parallel or sequential, and the approval decision method can be all approvers or any approver. | If approval is required from all users up to the user with an authorized code, then an approval is sent to all users within a management hierarchy up to the user with an authorized job code for the approved purchasing limit that covers the total amount of the purchase requisition. If approval is required from the most junior user with an authorized code, then an approval is sent to the most junior user within a management hierarchy up to the user with an authorized job code for the approved purchasing limit that covers the total amount of the purchase requisition. |
| Managerial Hierarchy | Approvals are triggered based on the purchasing user's manager's hierarchy. The approval routing method can be parallel or sequential, and the approval decision method can be all approvers or any approver. | If approval is required from all managers in hierarchy, then an approval is sent to all users in the purchasing user's (business owner) management hierarchy up to the job code specified, when the approval trigger conditions are met. If approval is required from the direct manager alone, then an approval is sent to the user's manager in the purchasing user's (business owner) management hierarchy. If approval is required from the most senior manager, then an approval is sent to the most senior manager in the purchasing user's (business owner) management hierarchy up to the job code specified. |
| Specified Users or Groups | Approvals are triggered based on the specified users or groups. The approval routing method is restricted to just sending approvals in parallel. | |
| Cost Center Managers | Approvals are triggered only for purchase requisitions, from multiple cost center managers. The approval routing method is restricted to just sending approvals in parallel. | If the cost of a purchase requisition is allocated across many cost centers, approvals are sent to each cost center manager for the cost allocation amount needing approval. If an individual item in the purchase requisition has cost allocated across multiple cost centers, all the cost center managers must provide their approval for the amount of that item to be approved. The purchase requisition can be partially or completely approved depending on the approval decision for each individual item or purchase line. Cost center managers receive email notifications for their approval with details of the purchase and the allocated amount needing approval. They can provide their approval directly from the email, or complete their approval in Shopping Hub, Employee Center, Virtual Agent, or Shopping Hub Mobile. |
Self-approved purchases
For requesters who possess the right purchasing authority, job code, or belong to designations that meet a defined purchasing approval matrix, their purchases are self-approved. An audit trail is made available, where an approval plan is created with the approval type as Self Approved, and in the Closed Complete state, though no actual approval tasks are created.