AX2012: Approval limits & Managerial Hierarchy

In this post, I’m presenting how the approval limits can be used in the workflows to route the business documents to specific line manager based on his approval limit.

Those who are directly landed to this post, my sincere suggestion is to see the posts “Signing limits in AX2012” & Managerial Hierarchy in workflows to have the complete understanding on “Signing limits setups”. This post is an extension to the previous ones.

Below image helps to understand the approval limits that are set to the jobs and hence applied to the respective employees through their positions.

Scenario: James submits a Purchase requisition for $3000 which is more than the spending limit allowed to his level. Adam is immediate manager to James, however the approval limit to Adam is $2000, so that the workflow should route the purchase requisition to Alex whose approval limit is $4000.

Below is how the position needs to be built and employees must be linked to the positions.

Set up the spending & approval limits to Jobs – Go to Organization administration>Setup>Signing limits> Signing Limit policies
Select the “Default signing limit rule” and set up the limits as shown in the below image.

Workflow configuration for Approval Limits:
As we’ve seen in the previous post, select the “Assignment type” – hierarchy in the “approval step” and in “hierarchy selection” tab, select”Managerial Hierarchy”.

With this setup, the submitted purchase requisition document will be routed to Adam, Alex and then to sunny.

But, our requirement is that if the purchase requisition that is submitted by James is $3000, it shouldn’t go to Adam(Team Lead) as it’s beyond his approval limit.

Workflow – Hierarchy options – Exclude users with the following condition:

In Hierarchy options tab, select “Exclude users with the following condition” then use the below condition.

Employee.ApprovalLimit.Purchase requisition < purchase requisition.approval amount.
So that, when then retrieved employee in the hierarchy doesn't meet the above condition, he will be skipped for the approval.

Now, raise a purchase requisition as James for $3000, and see the result that it will be directly routed to “Alex” -Manager.

Scenario: To stop the approval process with “Single approver” in the managerial hierarchy. What i mean is, once the first approver (whose approval limit is in range with the Purchase requisition amount) approves it, the document shouldn’t go to the next approver in the hierarchy.

In our example,Once Alex approves the Purchase requisition it should not go to “Sunny- Unit head”.

Hopefully I can return the favour: with regard to stopping the managerial hierarchy. I have been using PO approvals but it should apply to the others as well. Try using the following:

Hierarchy selection: Employee.Approval limit.Purchase requisition=> Field – Purchase requisition.approval amount
Hierarchy options: Assign only to last user retrieved

Incorporating this scenario With the help of a reader “Barry’. Thanks “Barry”

Hope you will like reading it. Keep visiting and keep experimenting with me . My next post will be on “Posting definitions in AX2012″ which will be used for “Budget – Pre encumberances”

Happy DAXing.