Procurement Approval Rules and Supplier Payment Controls

Approval rules are optional and set per workspace under Settings, Procurement & Vendors, Approval Rules. With no rule, a requisition, quotation award or supplier bill is approved in one step by anyone holding the approve permission — exactly as before rules existed. A rule changes that: it names a document type (procurement requisition, quotation award, or supplier bill), an amount band with a minimum and an optional maximum, an optional department, and up to eight ordered steps. Each step is either a role, which anyone holding it may sign, or a named person, with an optional label such as “Finance manager”.

When more than one rule could cover a document, AWRA prefers the rule limited to the document’s department, then the rule with the highest minimum. Amounts are converted to your base currency before the band is chosen, so a USD quotation lands in the same band as its KES equivalent. If there is no exchange rate on file for that currency, the document is held to the strictest matching rule rather than slipping under every band. A quotation award covers both a whole quote and an item-level award on an RFQ, where the selected lines from different suppliers are added together.

In practice: a distributor in Mombasa sets three requisition rules. From 0 to 50,000 KES, one step: the Procurement Officer role. From 50,000 to 500,000, two steps: Procurement Officer then Finance Manager. Above 500,000, three steps ending with the managing director by name. The Workshop department gets its own rule above 100,000 that adds the Workshop Manager as the first step. A 620,000 requisition from Workshop follows the Workshop rule, because a department rule wins over a general one; the same amount from Sales follows the three-step general rule.

Under a rule, one press of Approve is one signature. The document is only approved when the last step signs; until then the approval panel on the requisition, quotation, RFQ or bill shows the rule, the amount, each step, who signed it and when, and whose turn it is. When a step is signed, everyone who can sign the next step is notified. The same check runs on the web, in the approvals hub and in the mobile app, so no route skips a step. Rejecting at any step closes the chain and records who rejected it.

Three rules hold for every chain. The people who raised the document cannot sign it when the rule bars self-approval. One person signs at most one step of a document, so a finance manager who also holds the procurement role cannot sign both steps. And if the document changes after someone signs — the amount, the lines, or the item-level selection — the earlier signatures are set aside and approval starts again at step one, with a message saying so. When a named approver is away and has someone covering, the cover may sign that step and it is recorded as signed on their behalf.

In practice: a buyer raises a 180,000 KES requisition and tries to approve it herself; the panel refuses with “You raised this document, so someone else must approve it.” The Procurement Officer signs step 1. Before Finance signs, the buyer adds a line, taking it to 240,000. When the Finance Manager presses Approve, AWRA tells him the document changed since it was last signed and the approval started again — so the Procurement Officer must sign the new version first. The audit trail shows both trails, the superseded one and the one that completed.

Where a supplier is paid is the field a payment fraud changes. The covered details are the supplier’s M-Pesa phone, paybill, paybill account and till, the bank and the bank account number. Whenever any of them change, the supplier is emailed at the address on their record with what changed, account numbers masked, and the change is written to the audit log. That email cannot be switched off: the supplier is the one party who knows at once that a change is wrong.

For a second lock, turn on “A change to a supplier’s bank or M-Pesa details needs a second person” under Settings, Procurement & Vendors, Procurement Defaults. It is off by default. With it on, saving new details does not change them: the edit is held as a pending change, everyone who can approve vendors is notified, and payments keep going to the old details. Whoever asked for the change cannot approve it; someone else with the approve vendors permission approves or rejects it, from the web or from the mobile app. A newer edit replaces one still waiting, so a stale change cannot be approved over a correction.

In practice: an accounts clerk receives an email, apparently from a fuel supplier, asking for payments to go to a new bank account, and updates the supplier record. With the switch on, the change waits. The finance lead sees the pending change on the supplier — old and new account numbers masked to their last four digits — and phones the supplier on the number already on file. The supplier knows nothing about it; she rejects the change. Even without the switch, the supplier would have received the change notice and could have raised the alarm before the next payment run.