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Workflow 2015 - save button still enabled?? Able to post batches before all items approved??

Perhaps I am missing something here, but I created a vendor approval workflow. The workflow is active, and the submit button is available when I create the vendor.

However, the SAVE BUTTON is also there, so the person can SAVE the vendor without submitting it for approval!! WHAT THE HECK????!!!

So I thought.. Hey! Maybe the system will not let people do anything with that vendor until it's been approved.. After saving (but not submitting for approval) the new vendor, I went into the payables transaction window and created a fantastic new invoice for that vendor for $1000 and saved it, and assigned the invoice to a batch.. No problems!

So, apparently the new GP workflow system is an "on your honor" system, they are assuming people will click the submit button instead of save? Makes ZERO sense to me.

In addition to that, I tried out the payables document approval workflow. You have to assign the document to a batch. So, I'm thinking how is Sally in accounting going to know when the batch is ready to be posted, or when all the documents are approved? I opened up the batch, and to my DISMAY GP will let you POST the batch even if all the transactions that are in workflow are not approved yet. However, the batch does get stuck in BATCH RECOVERY, so there must be something inside the posting process that checks this. UNFORTUNATELY, it never tells the user why posting was interrupted, so to Sally, as far as she knows, her posting was just interrupted like GP often does, but she has no way of finding out why.

This does not look good. Am I missing something here?

Hello Rob

I would like to touch upon two things as related to both the vendor workflow and payable workflow.

Initially, when creating a new vendor, it must be submitted for approval as you mentioned above. Otherwise, as long as the vendor is either not submitted, or still through the approval process, transactions can be “entered” and saved but not posted for this specific vendor. When posting a transaction for a vendor that is still in the approval process, the posting report will state explicitly that an error occurred preventing the transaction from being posted due to the fact that the vendor is still within an approval process or not submitted. Therefore, the batch will be held in the batch recovery,

Here is the posting report:

I have provided further details regarding the vendor workflow on GP 2015 – Understanding Vendor Approval Workflow

The same logic applies to the payable batch workflow. As transactions can be entered, saved and submitted but not posted.

I do agree that it would be a valid suggestion and quite convincing to open a suggestion on MSConnect to consider minor enhancement to the workflow functionality by preventing any transactions from being entered on a specific vendor until it is finally approved. Meanwhile, you could definitely handle such requirements by building a stored procedure to make sure that the vendor status is inactive as long as the approval status is not complete. Once completed, it would switch the vendor status back to "active" so that transactions can be entered. You do need to test such functionality in order to make sure that no negative ramifications would occur.

Your feedback is highly appreciated,

As long as the vendor is either not submitted, or through the approval process. Transactions can be “entered” and saved but not posted for this specific vendor. When posting a transaction for a vendor that is still in the approval process, the batch will be held in the batch recovery, and the posting report will stat that an error has occurred preventing the transaction from posting. - See more at: mahmoudsaadi.blogspot.com/.../gp-2015-understanding-vendor-approval.html

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