Purchase requests & approvals
The Challenge
Requests involve budget, amount, manager, admin, suppliers; rules vary by threshold and category.
Common Blockers
- Email-based approvals with endless threads: impossible to know who still needs to approve.
- Delegation rules not applied: manager on holiday blocks urgent requests without an automatic substitute.
- No data on how much time and money the approval process itself costs.
The FlowSharp Solution
Automatic rules by amount, manual tasks, AI consistency check, ERP notification, analytics for human cost.
Process Stages
- 1
Request submission
The requester fills a structured form with supplier, amount, commodity category and justification. The Data Gate verifies completeness before sending for approval.
- 2
Automatic routing by threshold
FlowSharp rules route automatically: under €500 the direct manager approves; €500–5,000 involves administration too; above €5,000 requires double approval with CFO.
- 3
AI consistency check
An AI task compares the request against the cost center's available budget and recent purchases in the same category, flagging anomalies before they reach the approver.
- 4
Approval & ERP notification
Once approved, an event triggers notification to the ERP (SAP, Odoo, Business Central) for purchase order creation. The process tracks the generated PO number.
- 5
Human cost monitoring & analytics
FlowSharp measures average time per approval type and calculates the human cost per request. Analytics identifies the categories with the highest approval overhead.
Expected Outcomes
- Measurable approval cycle: average time baseline by category and threshold.
- Automatic delegation: if the primary approver doesn't respond within X hours, the task passes to the configured substitute.
- Process cost visible: every approval has a calculated human cost, useful for automation decisions.
Industry note — Administration
In administrative SMEs, the purchase process is often the first to be digitized because the ROI is immediate and measurable. FlowSharp lets you start with a simple 2-3 approval flow and add complexity (AI, ERP, multi-level) as the process matures.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Can I manage regular suppliers with a simplified path?
- Yes. You can configure a rule that, for whitelisted suppliers and sub-threshold amounts, routes the request directly to fast approval, skipping intermediate checks.
- How do I handle a manager who doesn't respond by the deadline?
- Each manual task in FlowSharp can have a timeout with configurable action: escalation to superior, reassignment to backup, or automatic notification to the requester.
- Can I see the total cost of the approval process in a month?
- Yes. FlowSharp analytics aggregate times per phase and multiply by the hourly cost configured per role. You get the real process cost, not an estimate.