Administer > Overview of administering a WebSphere Commerce site > Organization Administration Console > Approvals > Approval flows
Order approval flow
When a user in a buying organization submits an order for processing, the order system sends a notification message to the approver listed in the buying organization's profile, asking for order approval. If the approver approves the order, the Order subsystem continues to process the order, capturing the payment and sending the order to a fulfillment center. If the order is rejected, the order system sends a notification message to the user with a rejection reason.
The requirement for an order approval is normally specified in a contract between a buying organization and a selling organization. A contract contains terms that specify what products can be purchased and what promotions may be applied. Order approval terms specify what limits an order must be within before it requires order approval. Some terms apply to all users in an organization, and some apply to certain divisions.
Each item in an order is associated with a contract. Within a single order, different items may be associated with different contracts, so that some items require approval and others do not. If any item in an order requires approval, the whole order requires approval. The approver can approve the order even if there are several contracts associated with it.
The amount beyond which order an approval is required is specified in the ApprovalAmount attribute of the OrderApprove term that is located in the terms and conditions of a contract. If this attribute is set to 0, any amount requires approval. If a contract does not contain the OrderApprove term, no order approval is required.
A typical order approval flow is outlined in the following steps:
- A user in a buying organization submits an order.
- The Order subsystem finds the contracts that apply to the items in the order.
- The Order subsystem checks the order approval terms to determine if the order needs approval. If one item in an order is under a contract requiring approval, the entire order is subject to approval, even if other items in the order are under contracts that do no require approval.
- If the order requires approval, the Order subsystem sends order approval notifications to the approvers specified in the buying organization profile. An approver can open the Organization Administration Console to approve the order.
Notes:
- For blocked orders, when the order is approved, it is also unblocked and continues the order process, provided there are no other blocks.
- The buying organization can specify that they want order approvals during organization registration. Approvers must be explicitly added to the OrderApprovalGroup member group by the buyer administrator.
- If the order does not require approval, the Order subsystem continues to process the order by capturing payment and sending the order to the fulfillment center.
- The approver receives the order notification and reviews the order information, deciding to approve or reject it.
- If the order is approved, the Order subsystem continues to process the order by capturing the payment and sending the order to the fulfillment center. The fulfillment center then ships the order to the buying organization.
Related concepts
Business relationship management
Related tasks
Approve or reject approval requests
Select approval types for an organization