Our Purchase Requests Approved Themselves While the Managers Were on Holiday

Description and use

Implementing a five‑day auto‑approval rule for purchase requests caused unintended approvals, especially during summer. The revised process escalates to a deputy and then a manager, with weekly reports on delays, eliminating self‑approval and increasing transparency.

Problem

Purchase requests stalled when approvers were absent, leading to automatic approvals that sometimes caused unnecessary or duplicate orders.

Outcome

The new escalation process eliminated unintended auto‑approvals, restored accountability, and maintained similar approval times while providing visibility into pending requests.

Workflow

• Submit purchase request to budget holder
• Budget holder approves or forwards to finance if above threshold
• If no response within 3 working days, escalates to nominated deputy
• If no response within 2 additional days, escalates to deputy’s manager
• If still no response after 5 days, request is flagged in weekly report for finance review

Evidence

In the first months, though, requests sat for days with approvers who were busy or away. Departments complained that urgent orders were stalling.

Source

So we added a rule: if an approver had not responded within five working days, the workflow approved the request and moved it on.

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Last September finance noticed that August's spending on equipment was well above its usual level. When we pulled the workflow history, a hundred and forty requests had been approved by the timeout rule that month, more than in the previous six months together.

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Nothing in the workflow approves itself now. A request without a response after three working days goes to a named deputy, whom every budget holder must nominate, and after another two to that person's own manager.

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Requests waiting longer than a week appear on a weekly report to finance, and the requester can see who the request is waiting for.

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