A purchase commits the business to spending money, and significant spending should be deliberately authorised. Purchase approval rules ensure it is. This piece is about purchase approval rules in Odoo.
Why purchasing needs approval
A purchase order is a commitment to spend the business's money. Small, routine purchases are part of the normal running of the business and a buyer should be able to make them. But significant purchases, larger commitments of money, should not simply be made because a buyer initiated them; they should be deliberately authorised by someone with the authority to approve that spending. Without that control, significant amounts can be committed without deliberate authorisation, which is a real risk. Purchase approval rules are the control: they require significant purchases to be approved before they are committed.
What purchase approval rules do
A purchase approval rule requires a purchase, beyond some defined point, to be approved before it can proceed to being a committed order. The purchase is held until someone with the appropriate authority approves it. So a significant purchase is not committed the moment a buyer creates it; it is held for deliberate authorisation. Odoo supports requiring approval for purchases, so purchase approval rules can be set up.
Setting up the rules: where the line falls
The key part of setting up purchase approval rules is deciding where the line falls: what level of purchase is within a buyer's latitude to commit directly, and what level requires approval. This is a business decision, and it should be made deliberately. Set the threshold too low, and approval is required for routine purchasing, which adds friction, slows the business, and makes the approvals so frequent they become rubber stamps. Set it too high, and significant spending can be committed with no control. The right threshold lets routine purchasing flow and catches the significant commitments. The threshold should reflect what the business genuinely considers a significant enough purchase to warrant deliberate authorisation.
Approval must be a genuine decision
As with any approval, a purchase approval is worth having only if it is a genuine decision. An approver who waves through every purchase provides the form of control without the substance. Purchase approval rules deliver real control only if, when a significant purchase comes up for approval, whoever approves genuinely considers it, is this purchase justified, is the spending warranted, and has the authority and knowledge to judge it. The rule provides the gate; the genuine decision is what makes the gate real.
The benefit: deliberate spending
The benefit of purchase approval rules is that significant spending becomes deliberate. The business commits significant money by a decision that someone with authority genuinely made, rather than by purchases that simply happened. This is control over one of the things most worth controlling, the spending of the business's money. And, because the approvals are within the system, the business also has a record: significant purchases were approved, by whom, which is part of genuine financial control. Purchase approval rules, set up with a sensible threshold and used with genuine approvals, give a business deliberate, controlled, recorded spending on its significant purchases.
The takeaway
Purchase approval rules in Odoo require significant purchases to be deliberately approved before they are committed, so the spending of the business's money is controlled. Routine purchases flow within a buyer's latitude; purchases beyond a defined threshold require approval. The key is setting the threshold sensibly, so routine purchasing flows and the significant is caught, and the approval must be a genuine decision by someone with the authority to judge it. The result is deliberate, controlled, recorded spending on significant purchases. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.