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 -
The approval chain can be viewed 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 on topright -
If a user from each approval level approves the contract, it is set to one of the two "Approved" states. Contracts have to 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 there are no approval levels with the category, then approval levels are ignored, and one member of the group has to 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 wil go straight to an approved state with no approvals needed.
If the creator of the contract is one of those that needs to approve then 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 MA's (Managing Agents) will have zero level contract approval levels, with the approvers set to be the building default handling group managers. This would mean all contracts have to be approved.