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Purchases are a necessary component of running any business. But how do companies control who can make purchases, what those individuals are permitted to purchase, and when those purchases would need to be approved by someone else in the company? Let's talk about purchase approval routing in NetSuite. We'll look at setting up your account for purchase approval routing, discuss how purchase requests work, and then walk through the standard approval process. The first step in purchase approval routing is to enable three key features in NetSuite: purchase orders, purchase requests, and approval routing. The purchase orders feature is located under the Transactions subtab of Enable Features, while purchase requests and approval routing are both located under the Employees subtab of Enable Features. Next, let's get a big picture overview of purchase requests. Purchase requests are transaction records for any purchases that would require approval before the purchase order can be created. A purchase request record contains all the relevant details about the pending purchase, including the item that would be purchased, the expected cost, and the vendor. A single purchase request can include multiple items, but it cannot include multiple vendors. This restriction is reasonable, considering that purchase requests will naturally convert into purchase orders. After all, you wouldn't send the same purchase order to multiple vendors. If you're familiar with NetSuite's terminology surrounding purchases, then you probably have encountered requisitions. A requisition shares some characteristics with a purchase request, such as including specific items and the cost of those items. But a requisition can't be converted into a purchase order like a purchase request can. So what is the standard approval process that purchase requests go through on their path to becoming purchase orders? To begin with, let's look at who can create a purchase request in the first place. Employees who have access to the Employee Center can create purchase requests. These employees may also have access to other centers through other roles that their jobs require. But when they need to create a new purchase request, they would log into the Employee Center role. Second, you would need to determine when approvals are required. How do you know for sure when an approval is required or when a purchase order can be created directly? It actually depends on each individual employee. On each Employee record, the administrator would set that individual's purchase limit. The purchase limit is the maximum amount that an employee can spend without getting approval for the order. For example, a receptionist at an office may have a purchase limit of $100 and would be free to create purchase orders up to that amount. Any purchase that exceeds $100, however, would need to start as a purchase request and go through the approval routing process. Next, you need to figure out who can approve purchase requests. Depending on the size of your company, the hierarchy of purchase approvers may be either simple or complex. Employees who are purchase approvers would have designated purchase approval limits, which are the maximum amounts they are authorized to approve. If the amount on the purchase request exceeds an approver's limit, then the request would be bumped up to the next purchase approver until it gets to someone who is authorized to approve that amount. Administrators designate the approval limits that approvers are permitted on their employee records. Supervisors are the default purchase approver for any purchase requests made by employees they supervise. If another individual needs to be the first approver in the approval process for that employee, however, then that information would be detailed on the employee's record, and the supervisor would no longer be part of the approval routing process for that employee. When designated approvers need to approve purchase requests, how do they do that? First, they would log into the Employee Center. In the Employee Center, they would select Approve Purchase Requests, choose the specific employee whose request they want to approve, and select the box next to the specific purchase request. Once the approver has saved the page, that purchase request has been approved and will automatically convert to a purchase order. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, let us know by hitting the like button. And to learn more about how SuiteRep can help you with all of your NetSuite needs, visit us at suiterep.com.