eProcureAI / Platform / Intake and Approvals
Intake and ApprovalsYou write the rules once. After that every request finds its own approvers, arrives with everything they need to decide, and chases itself if somebody sits on it.
This is the real screen. Rule name, thresholds, approvers and routing logic, exactly as they appear.
The person raising a request should not need to understand your approval matrix. They just need the thing they asked for.
In eProcureAI they never see it. They fill in the request, and the routing rules take over. A rule is a short set of conditions. Which departments it covers, a minimum and maximum amount, who the approvers are, and whether those approvers go one after another or all at once. That is the whole thing.
So a rule might say that IT and Engineering spending between five and twenty five thousand goes to Jordan first and then Priya. Anything above that picks up a different rule with finance on it. The requester types nothing about any of this and does not need to remember it changed last quarter.
An approver opens one screen and sees the request, the catalog lines, the quote, the charge code and how much money is left on it. Enough to decide without opening three tabs or asking a follow up question.
They can approve from a phone, which sounds small until you count how many approvals in your company are currently waiting on somebody who is on a plant floor or between meetings. Every decision gets logged with who made it, when, and why.
Requests that go quiet get chased on your schedule rather than by a person keeping a list. If an approver is away, their delegate picks it up, and both names stay on the record. Work does not stop because somebody took a week off.
A paper based process went fully digital in under a month. By week three, nobody wanted to go back.Robin D., Purchasing Agent, healthcare
Somebody in IT submits a laptop refresh. They picked a department and an amount, which is all the routing needs to work out where it goes.
Department IT, amount above twenty five thousand. That combination points at one rule, which names two approvers in order and applies a budget check first.
Jordan opens it, sees the lines, the quote and the charge code balance, and signs off from his phone between meetings.
Priya sees that charge code 4403 has less available than the request needs, so it came through as an exception. She approves it with a note explaining the reallocation.
Two approvals, eleven minutes, no reminders needed and no phone calls. The purchase order gets created from what was approved.
Name it, pick the departments it covers, set a minimum and maximum amount, choose the approvers, decide whether they go in order or together. Procurement writes these, not IT, which is why they actually stay current.
Sequential means each approver signs off one after another, which suits anything where finance should only look once the manager agrees. Parallel sends it to everyone at once and suits sign offs that do not depend on each other.
The charge code balance is checked as the request is submitted. If it fits, the normal chain runs. If it does not, the request comes through marked as an exception so the approver knows before opening it.
Approvals get faster when the software handles the routing and people only handle the judgement.
Two roles, and neither of them involves knowing your approval matrix by heart.
All the parts that used to involve a spreadsheet, a reminder email, or somebody asking where a request had got to.
These are the shapes we see most often in the first week of setup. Yours will differ in the numbers rather than the structure.
| Rule | Applies to | Range | Approvers | Logic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small everyday spend | All departments | Under $500 on catalog items | Nobody | Straight through |
| Standard purchase | All departments | $500 to $5,000 | Department manager | Single approver |
| IT and engineering spend | IT, Engineering | $5,000 to $25,000 | Manager, then Finance | Sequential |
| Large commitment | All departments | Above $25,000 | Manager, Finance, Head of function | Sequential |
| New supplier | All departments | Any amount, supplier not yet approved | Procurement and Finance | Parallel |
Rules are checked against each other when you save, so two rules covering the same department and the same amount cannot quietly both fire.
Their delegate picks it up automatically, with a scope and an end date you set. Both names stay on the record, so nothing looks like it was signed by somebody who was on a beach.
Requests that go quiet get a reminder on your schedule, then escalate to the next person up if they stay quiet. No human has to keep a chase list.
The request comes through as an exception rather than being refused. The approver sees the shortfall and decides, which is usually a reallocation rather than a no.
Procurement and finance are pulled in together rather than one after the other, because the two checks do not depend on each other and running them in parallel saves a day.
Urgent requests take a shorter chain rather than no chain. Fewer approvers, same evidence captured, so speed does not cost you the audit trail.
If the new figure crosses into a different rule, it routes again from that point. Approvals already given for a smaller number do not silently cover a bigger one.
We will build your real rules on screen and put a live request through them, so you can see where it lands.
Book your free demoNext in the chain: Purchasing and POs