Vendor Approvals (Business Central)

the vendor approvals feature provides a robust and secure method for managing changes to vendor bank account information within your erp this approval process ensures data accuracy, minimizes the risk of errors, and enhances security by requiring authorization for changes to your vendor's banking data creating a workflow to create your vendor approvals workflow for your erp utilizing the plugin, please follow these steps enable vendor record approvals an erp administrator or consultant must first access the {{fispanportal}} by logging in at https //sys fispan live/login once logged in, select the vendor record approvals tile you'll then be prompted to start creating your workflows create a workflow once you are on the vendor record approvals page, click let's get started start by giving your workflow a clear, descriptive name for easy identification later next, select the entities you want the approval workflow to apply to addresses applies to addresses added via the payment methods page or changes made to the native erp vendor record address bank accounts applies to bank accounts added via the payment methods page or changes made to the native erp vendor record bank account email groups applies to email groups added via the payment methods page or changes made to the native erp vendor record emails note to exclude changes synced from the erp from this approval process, please contact the support team add approvers to workflow next, you need to define the approvers for your workflow in the first level, enter the approver's email address exactly as it appears on their user record in the erp system add another level for approval and additional approvers, if needed you can set up to three levels of approval at each level, you can add up to five potential approvers you can also decide how many individual approvals are required per level (e g level 1 requires 2 approvals, level 2 requires 3 approvals, level 3 requires 1 approval) note important considerations no self approval you cannot approve your own vendors keep this in mind if a single user frequently acts as both the vendor creator and an approver best practice for approvers to avoid delays, we suggest avoid having a single approver in a level adding more approvers than the required approvals (e g , include 4 approvers in a level that requires 2 approvals) this ensures the process can continue even if someone is unavailable important to approve changes, users in the workflow must have both an erp license and the necessary plugin permissions save workflow once you have configured your workflow, click save new workflow your workflow is now active all changes made to vendors through the {{productname}} will now follow this approval process editing a workflow you can edit or delete a workflow, but only if there are no pending approvals for that workflow this prevents any confusion or errors with payments currently going through the approval process in the event you need to edit a workflow with associated open payments, process or cancel any outstanding payments associated with the workflow select workflow you can edit existing workflows to adjust them click on the workflow you would like to modify edit workflow make your desired modifications, and click save changes editing restrictions modifying the entities associated with a workflow will disable any other workflows that were previously applied to those entities similar to making edits to workflows, all future requests for these entities will go through the new workflow; existing requests will remain unaffected deleting a workflow workflows with pending approvals cannot be deleted until those approvals are resolved deleting an active workflow can be done following these simple steps select workflow select the workflow to delete then, click delete workflow confirm deletion a pop up will appear confirm deletion by clicking yes, delete workflow disabling a workflow to disable a workflow, toggle enable flow then click save changes approvals accessing pending approvals navigate to the vendor approvals page within the business central plugin by default, you'll see all pending approval requests for your organization the approvals page table provides a comprehensive overview of each payment request, with the following key details request date the precise date when the payment was initiated within the plugin vendor the name of the vendor that had their record modified entity the type of data changed it will be either address, bank account or email group user/requested by the name of the user who submitted the payment request source where the change was made it will be either plugin ui or erp approval progress a tracker which provides context to where a payment is within the approval process to view only the requests assigned to you, click the show assigned to me only filter to review a specific request, click view this will display key information such as type of change whether it's an update to existing details, a new vendor bank detail, or a deletion of a vendor bank detail requested date the date and time the change was submitted requester the user who initiated the change detailed breakdown a comprehensive view of the proposed changes, addition, or deletion to the vendor's bank details approval process to approve a request click approve to authorize the proposed changes the request will either progress to the next level in the approval workflow (if multiple tiers are configured) or, if you are the final approver, the vendor's bank details will be updated accordingly in the payment methods page to reject a request click reject to deny the proposed changes important rejection is a terminal action if a change is rejected in error, the initiating user will need to resubmit the request you will be required to provide a rejection reason since rejections are terminal, the request will not be routed to any other approvers and the proposed changes will be reverted erp synced changes rejection disabled for changes that originate from your erp system (erp synced changes), the "reject" button will be disabled rationale this restriction is in place to prevent accidental overwrites or conflicts with the data in your erp maintaining consistency between the plugin and your erp is crucial resolution if an erp synced change needs to be reversed or modified, the initiating user must make the necessary adjustments directly within the erp system note if you would like erp synced changes to not be eligible for approval, please reach out to the support team impact on workflows when an approval request is created by modifying a vendor's bank details, the following updates happen within your plugin pay bills page when a vendor has a pending change, payments will not be able to be processed for this vendor this is to ensure that the vendor has the most up to date information before payments are processed a warning icon and greyed out checkbox will prevent these vendors from being paid payment methods page on the payment methods page, the vendor will have an icon identifying there are pending changes if you click on the vendor, you will see the record that has been changed is highlighted furthermore, if you open the record, you will see all fields are greyed out and cannot be edited approvals history the approvals history page maintains a comprehensive log of all approval requests, including both those that were approved and those that were rejected to view more details about a request, you can click view and see the following date and time when the approval or rejection occurred user the individual who approved or rejected the request reason any comments or explanations provided for the decision source the origin of the change request (e g , manual update, import) approvals history export you can export the approvals history for record keeping or analysis the export file includes modified on date the change was made vendor vendor name type of change updated, added, deleted user email user who initiated the change reviewed by user emails who approved or rejected the change approval/rejection time time when the final approving user reviewed the change or rejection was sent status approved or rejected previous entry what the entry looked like before it was changed this would be empty if the history log item is for a new record being created proposed entry what the entry looks like after a change was initiated or rejected if entry was rejected, this is the change that was proposed if the entry was approved, this is the change that was accepted reason for rejection the rejection reason provided by the rejecting user this will be empty if the record is an approved item to generate this export, click the export button on the approvals history page faq can i reject erp synced changes? no, rejection is disabled for erp synced changes to prevent data inconsistencies contact the user who initiated the change to resolve any issues what if i accidentally reject a valid change? rejection is a terminal action if a change is rejected in error, the initiating user will need to resubmit the request