Purchasing: spending rules, approvers and budgets

Set what is approved by itself, who approves the rest, when Finance checks too, and a budget for the year.

What's in this video

1. Spending rules decide what happens when someone asks to buy something. Within the rules, it's approved and ordered straight away. Outside them, a person decides. Click Purchasing settings, under Set up.
2. Every change you save here is kept as a new version, with who made it. So you can always see what the rules were when something was approved.
3. Approve by themselves up to. We'll use two hundred and fifty pounds. Everyday parts below that go straight through. Anything bigger waits for an approver.
4. Stop requests that go over budget. Ticked, a request that would go over is stopped, and the person sees why. Unticked, it goes to an approver, with the reason, instead.
5. Only order from active suppliers. Keep this one ticked. It's what stops an order going to a supplier nobody has checked yet.
6. Tick Preferred suppliers only if buying from anyone else should need an approver. Keep Nobody approves their own request switched on. Then click Save spending rules.
7. Who approves. Requests over the automatic amount go to anyone whose role has Approve, or higher, in OmniSchema's User roles. Big ones go to Finance as well. Our finance director checks anything over five thousand pounds. Click Save who approves.
8. Allowed differences on bills decides how close a supplier's bill must be to its order to be approved without anyone touching it. We'll come back to that in the video on bills.
9. Now budgets. Click Budgets. A budget is what you plan to spend. Orders count against it as soon as they're made, and bills once they're approved.
10. To add one, click Budget. Give it a name, the amount, and the dates it covers, then click Add and start using. We've already added ours: Maintenance parts 2026, forty thousand pounds for the whole year.
11. Here it is. As orders go out, On order goes up, and Left goes down. The bar shows how much is used, and turns amber when the budget is nearly gone.
12. One mistake to avoid: setting the automatic amount too low. Then your approvers spend the day approving five pound fittings. Set it so routine parts go straight through, and approvers only see what's worth a second look.
13. In the next video, we'll ask to buy something, and see one request approved by the rules, and another wait for an approver.