The Approve Purchase Request module lets authorized users, such as managers, HR, or assigned approvers, review, approve, or reject purchase requests.
If a purchase approval flow is configured, requests follow the steps in that flow. If no flow applies, the request goes directly to the Subscriber Admin.
Where to Find It #
Go to Dashboard → Purchase → Approve. This is the one place where purchase requests are approved or rejected — you cannot act on a request from the All Purchase Requests page or from its details page opened from there.
Good to know: The table only shows purchase requests where you are assigned in the approval flow. The Subscriber Admin can see all purchase requests.
Your Approve or Reject permission controls whether you can take action on a request, but the approval flow decides which requests appear in your list.
Who Can Use This Feature #
Subscriber Admin can approve or reject any purchase request in the company, at whichever step it currently sits on, without needing any specific permission.
Employees can approve or reject a purchase request if they’re the assigned approver for its current step and hold the matching permission below — or, for purchase requests specifically, simply by holding the matching permission on its own, even without being named anywhere in the approval flow. This “act by permission alone” path is unique to purchase requests among Office-X’s approval-based modules (leave, bill, and travel all strictly require being the assigned approver, permission alone is never enough for those).
Permission Behavior
Two permissions control these actions:
- Approve Purchase Request (As Approver)
Required action: Update
Shows the Approve option for purchase requests where you’re the assigned approver — or for any pending purchase request at all, since holding this permission is by itself sufficient to act, independent of the approval flow. - Reject Purchase Request (As Approver)
Required action: Update
Shows the Reject option for purchase requests where you’re the assigned approver — or for any pending purchase request at all, since holding this permission is by itself sufficient to act, independent of the approval flow.
Good to know: For purchase requests, you can get the Approve or Reject option in either of these ways:
- You are the assigned approver for the current approval step and have the matching permission.
- You have the matching Approve Purchase Request (As Approver) or Reject Purchase Request (As Approver) permission, even if you are not assigned as an approver for that request.
So, for purchase requests, having the required permission by itself is enough to take action.
To open and view the details of a purchase request, the employee also needs the View Purchase Request Details permission.
These permissions can be assigned directly to an employee, or to an entire team at once (so everyone on that team inherits them). See the Permissions Management guide for how to assign permissions.
How Approval Flow Works With Purchase Requests #
This works exactly the same way as leave, bill, and travel approval do — if you’ve read any of those guides already, the mechanics here will feel familiar, since they all use the same underlying approval-flow engine.
The Moment a Purchase Request Is Created
The instant an employee (or someone submitting on their behalf) submits a purchase request, Office-X checks the approval flows set up under Dashboard → Admin → Approval Flows to find the one that applies to that employee — based on the employee themselves, their team, gender, department, or designation. At most one flow applies to any single purchase request.
If an Approval Flow Applies
The purchase request is saved as Pending and linked to that flow, with a step-by-step checklist built for it — one entry per step, each starting out as “pending.” Only the first step’s approver(s) are contacted at this point; nobody assigned to a later step hears anything yet. Whether that first-step notice arrives as an in-app notification, an email, both, or neither depends on how that step was configured. The employee who submitted the request always gets their own confirmation email regardless.
Good to know: if a step’s approver type is Reporting Manager but the employee doesn’t actually have one assigned, the Subscriber Admin automatically stands in as the approver for that step instead — so the request never gets stuck with nobody able to act on it.
If No Approval Flow Applies
The purchase request is still created and saved as Pending, but with no step checklist at all — it simply waits on the Subscriber Admin. Only the Subscriber Admin can act on it, and no one else can until an approval flow is set up to cover that employee.
Approval Flow Behavior #
Normally, only users who are assigned as approvers in the applicable approval flow step can take action on the purchase request — but as covered above, anyone holding the Approve/Reject Purchase Request permission can act regardless of the flow, purchase requests being the one exception among these approval-based modules. Each step is set up with exactly one approver type:
- Reporting Manager
- Company Admin
- Selected Employees
If no approval flow is configured, purchase requests default to the Subscriber Admin — see above for exactly what that means.
Step-by-Step Approval, In Detail #
When a flow has more than one step, the steps are always processed strictly in order — a later step can never be acted on before every step before it has been approved.
Approving a step does not approve the whole purchase request. It only marks that one step as approved (recording who approved it and when), moves the request on to the next step if one exists, and notifies that next step’s approver(s) that it’s now their turn.
Only when the final step is approved does the purchase request’s overall status actually change to Approved. Up until then, the request stays Pending, even though one or more steps have already said yes.
For example, in a 3-step flow (Reporting Manager → Department Head → Company Admin): once the Reporting Manager approves, the request is still Pending — it’s simply moved on to the Department Head. Once they approve, it’s still Pending, now waiting on the Company Admin. Only once the Company Admin approves does the status finally become Approved.
A Reject at any step — first or last — immediately sets the purchase request’s overall status to Rejected. There’s no need for every step to weigh in; one rejection ends it, and steps after the rejected one are simply never reached.
What Happens to a Step Once It’s Decided #
Once an approver has acted on their step, they can’t act on that same purchase request again. If they’re also the assigned approver for a later step in the same flow, they’ll get another chance to act when the request reaches that step; otherwise, their involvement in taking action is finished. They can, however, still view the request and add comments for as long as it remains open for comments (see Comments & Communication below).
The Subscriber Admin’s Role #
The Subscriber Admin can always step in and approve or reject whichever step is currently pending on any purchase request — even if they aren’t personally named as that step’s Reporting Manager, Company Admin, or Selected Employee. But this only lets them act on the current step; it does not let them skip ahead or finalize the whole request early.
In other words: if a 3-step flow is configured and the Subscriber Admin clicks Approve on step 1, the outcome is exactly the same as if the regularly assigned step-1 approver had clicked it — step 1 is marked approved, and the request moves on to step 2, still Pending. The only situation where the Subscriber Admin’s decision is instantly final is when no approval flow applies at all — there, since there’s no step structure, a single Approve or Reject from the Subscriber Admin is the whole decision.
Finding the Requests You Need #
Each row on the Approve Purchase Requests table shows the ID, Employee, Est Cost (with its currency), Attachment (a tick or cross), Priority, Status, Requested Date, and the Action menu. Newest requests come first.
To get to the right one quickly:
- Search — type an employee name or ID.
- Filters — the Filters button opens Priority (All, High, Medium, Low), Status (All, Pending, Approved, Rejected) and a Requested Date From/To range. Set Status to Pending and sort your attention by Priority to work through the queue sensibly. The button shows how many filters are on, and Clear removes them all.
- Columns — hide the columns you do not use.
- Pages — 10 rows per page by default, switchable to 20 or 30, with a “go to page” box.
Action Options for Approvers #
Eligible approvers can perform the following actions based on their approval flow assignment and permissions:
- Approve
Approves the purchase request’s current step. If a multi-step approval flow is configured, the request moves to the next approver. If it is the final approval step, the purchase request becomes Approved. This takes effect immediately when you click it — there’s no confirmation prompt. - Reject
Rejects the purchase request immediately, regardless of which step it was rejected at. There’s no built-in reason field on the Reject action itself — if you want to explain why you’re rejecting a request, add a Comment first (see Comments & Communication below), since comments can only be added while the request is still Pending. - View
Opens the purchase request details so the approver can review the full request information before taking action. - Comment
Adds a note to the request. This is the only way to put a reason on record, since Approve and Reject have no reason field of their own.
Good to know: Approve and Reject each act on one purchase request at a time — there’s currently no option to select multiple requests and approve or reject them together in bulk.
Good to know: Notifications depend on what happens to the purchase request:
- Rejected: Only the employee who submitted the request is notified.
- Intermediate approval: The employee is notified that the request moved forward, and the next approver(s) are notified that it is their turn.
- Final approval: The employee is notified that the request is fully approved.
Approvers who already completed their step will not receive another notification as the request moves forward.
What Approvers Can View #
From the purchase request details page, approvers can review:
- Equipment or service details
- Estimated cost
- Priority level
- Currency
- Requester or employee details
- Uploaded attachments
- Approval workflow progress and history
- Comments
The Approval Workflow section shows all approval steps in one place, including the step order, status, approver, and action date.
If a purchase request is rejected at any step, the approval process stops there. The remaining steps are not shown as skipped or processed.
The Timeline #
Alongside the approval steps, the details page carries a Timeline — a plain Date / Action / Action By table of what has actually happened to this request, oldest first. It is the quickest way to see the full story before you decide:
- Created — when it was submitted and, importantly, who submitted it. If someone filed it on the employee’s behalf, you will see that here rather than having to guess.
- Edits — if the request was changed after submission, each change is listed field by field, from the old value to the new one. Attachment changes appear as a count of files added and removed. Worth a glance before approving: the estimated cost you checked yesterday may not be the one in front of you today.
- Each approval or rejection — which step, who acted, and when.
The two views answer different questions: the Timeline shows what has happened, while the Approval Workflow section shows the planned route and which step is waiting now.
Comments & Communication #
Approvers can add comments to purchase requests to:
- Provide instructions or feedback to the employee
- Request clarification regarding the request
- Explain the reason for rejection, since there’s no reason field on the Reject action itself
- Track communication during the approval process
Comments support file attachments, up to 5 per comment. Anyone who can already view the purchase request can comment on it — the requester, the requester’s reporting manager, the Subscriber Admin, any approver named anywhere in the flow, or anyone holding View Purchase Request Details permission — but only while it’s still Pending. As soon as it’s Approved or Rejected, commenting closes; comments made while it was still pending remain visible afterward.
All comments are logged and visible in the purchase request history for transparency.
Your Daily Routine #
Clearing your purchase approvals:
- Go to Dashboard → Purchase → Approve.
- Open Filters and set Status: Pending — that is your actual to-do list. Deal with the High priority ones first.
- Click a row to open it. Read the equipment or service details, check the estimated cost and currency, and open any attached quotation to confirm the figure is backed up.
- Glance at the Timeline for any edits made since submission, and to see who filed the request.
- If the description is too vague to judge, add a Comment asking for specifics and wait — the employee can reply while the request is still Pending.
- If you are going to reject, write your comment first. Reject has no reason field, and comments close the moment the request is rejected — so an unexplained rejection stays unexplained.
- Click Approve or Reject. Both take effect immediately, with no confirmation prompt, so be sure before you click.
- Approving a step in a multi-step flow does not finish the request — it hands it to the next approver. The employee still sees Pending until the last step is done.
Good to know: if you open a request and the Approve/Reject options are not there, it is one of three things — it is not your step’s turn yet, you have already acted on your step, or someone else (often the Subscriber Admin) got there first. Refresh the page to see the current status.
Notifications and Activity Log #
- When it is your turn, you get a notice asking you to act — in-app, by email, both, or neither, depending on how that step was set up in the approval flow. The email links straight to the request.
- When you approve an intermediate step, the next approver is notified and the employee gets an update. When you approve the final step, the employee is told the request is fully Approved.
- When you reject, only the employee is told — nobody further down the flow is contacted, and approvers who already acted on earlier steps are not notified again.
- If you do not seem to be getting notified, it is usually that step’s notification and email switches rather than a fault — ask your Subscriber Admin to check the step under Admin → Approval Flows.
Activity Log: every approval and rejection is recorded in Dashboard → Activity Log with the request and who decided it — alongside the request’s own Timeline. Comments are logged too, so a decision and the discussion behind it stay traceable together.
Summary #
The Approve Purchase Request module helps ensure purchase requests are reviewed and processed correctly. Each request either follows the configured approval flow step by step or goes directly to the Subscriber Admin when no flow applies. Each approval moves the request to the next step, and it becomes Approved only after the final step is approved. A rejection at any step rejects the request immediately.
To approve or reject a purchase request, users can either be assigned as an approver in the current step or have the required Approve Purchase Request (As Approver) or Reject Purchase Request (As Approver) permission.
