Contract approvals

When a contract is added or edited, and the value exceeds the contract approval level for the building, the approver(s) will be emailed.

They can find it under Compliance / Contracts / Contracts to approve.

You can view the approval chain under the Approvals tab for a contract. If you are on the approval chain and it awaits your decision, you will find the option to approve or dispute the contract as highlighted below in the top right.

If a user from each approval level approves the contract, it is set to one of the two "Approved" states. Contracts must be approved before invoice auto-approval can occur. The organisation privilege Contracts default to auto approve determines which approved state the contract goes to. The assigned contractor is not notified until the contract is approved.

Some important rules of thumb regarding contract approvals-

• If someone has a contract approval of £500, then they are required to approve all contracts OVER £500, rather than *UP TO* £500.
• If the approval level has a category, then any contracts created with that category will use only those approval levels (if the category has a Special Handling Category, then it is ignored in this instance).
• If the contract has a Special Handling Category AND no approval levels have that category, then approval levels are ignored, and one member of the group must approve the contract.
• If the contract has a category that is not used on any approval levels for the building, and it does not have a Special Handling Category, or no category is selected on the contract, then approval levels with no category set will be used.
• If the building has no approval levels, and the contract has no SHC, then it will go straight to an approved state with no approvals needed.

If the creator of the contract is one of those who needs to approve, their approval is automatically given when the contract is created or edited (this includes Super Approvers). If they are the only approver, the contract will go straight into an approved state. 

If the privilege Contracts: Skip Junior Approvers on Contract Creation is enabled, then approvers below the contract creator are skipped. The privilege Contracts: Skip Junior Approvers on Contract Creation and Approval will also skip lower approvers when a user clicks approve or replies to the email.

Note: Many MAs (Managing Agents) will have zero-level contract approval levels, with approvers set to the building default handling group managers. This means all contracts have to be approved.