Our Purchase Requests Approved Themselves While the Managers Were on Holiday

说明与用途

实施五天自动批准规则导致意外批准，尤其在夏季。新流程将请求升级到代理人和经理，并每周报告延迟，消除自动批准并提高透明度。

问题

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

结果

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

工作流

• 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

证据

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

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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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