AWRA Help Center

The policy lives in Settings → Procurement Defaults (/settings/procurement), under Requisition policy. Restricted items are marked on the item itself. Everything here is off until your workspace switches it on, so existing approvals behave exactly as before.

Where The Policy Is Checked

At every point the budget check already guards: approving a requisition, approving an RFQ, awarding a whole quote, awarding item by item, and sending orders from the Reorder page. On a document that breaks the policy, a Purchasing policy panel says which line and which supplier, on the web and in the app.

Preferred Suppliers

1. Give each item its preferred supplier on the item, as before.
2. In Procurement Defaults, choose Buying away from the preferred supplier: Allow it (the default), Allow it and flag it, or Refuse it unless overridden.
3. Optionally tick Only suppliers marked preferred: an item with no preferred supplier of its own may then only be bought from a supplier whose vendor record is marked preferred.
4. Press Save.

• Flag lets approval go ahead and lists it under Policy exceptions.
• Refuse stops approval until someone with the Override purchasing policy permission fills in Why this supplier (at least ten characters) and presses Approve with this supplier. When the budget also blocks, the budget reason is asked for in the same step.
• The Reorder page never overrides. A blocked reorder is refused there and has to go through a requisition, where a reason can be given.

Restricted Items

1. Open the item and set Restricted purchase to Yes — needs an approver allowed to buy it, with a note such as Controlled substance: pharmacist sign-off.
2. Approving any requisition, RFQ or award that buys it now needs the Approve restricted purchases permission, on top of your approval rules.
3. Once approved on the requisition, the approval carries down: the RFQ and the quotes raised from that requisition are not stopped again.

Emergency Purchases

1. Tick Allow emergency purchases and, if you want a ceiling, set an Emergency limit. Blank means no limit.
2. Someone with the Raise emergency purchase permission ticks Emergency purchase on a requisition and writes the reason, for example Generator failed at the cold store; stock spoils within 24 hours.
3. The emergency gets past a budget block and a preferred-supplier block, with the reason recorded.

An emergency does not get past restricted items or approval rules, and above the emergency limit it follows the ordinary rules.

Policy Exceptions

Open Policy exceptions from the Procurement overview or the Related menu (/procurement/policy-exceptions). Every flagged or overridden supplier choice, restricted purchase and emergency is listed with when, kind, document, supplier, amount, who made it and their reason. Filter by Waiting for review, Reviewed or All, and by kind.

To review one, type a note and press Mark reviewed. Reviewing needs the Override purchasing policy permission, and nobody can review their own exception. The list is also in the AWRA mobile app, reached from the Procurement overview.

Permissions

• Override purchasing policy — approve past a preferred-supplier block with a reason, and review exceptions made by others.
• Approve restricted purchases — approve anything that buys a restricted item.
• Raise emergency purchase — flag a requisition as an emergency.
• Manage settings — change the policy in Procurement Defaults.

Common Mistakes

• Choosing Refuse before items have preferred suppliers. With Only suppliers marked preferred off, an item with no preferred supplier is never blocked.
• Expecting an emergency to skip the approval chain. It only lifts budget and preferred-supplier blocks.
• Giving the override to one person only. Exceptions they make cannot be reviewed by them, so give it to at least two.
• Overriding on the sourcing workbench. Its award form has no policy-override field yet; award a blocked supplier from the item-level award page, where Why this supplier is asked.

Related

• Approval Rules — who approves, by amount.
• Budgets — the budget block an emergency can pass.
• Requests — raising a requisition.