Approval Hierarchy in R12 Purchasing

Oracle Purchasing offers three methods to route documents for approval.


1. Position Approval hierarchy 
2. Employee/Supervisor approval hierarchy
3. AME – Approval Management Engine (for requisitions only)


1. Position Based Approval hierarchy
Position Hierarchies are based on JOB/POSITION relationship attached to an employee.
Please refer the logic below:

Set up for Position Based approval Hierarchy
Define Job
Define Position
Position Hierarchies
Define employees
Approval Groups
Approval Assignments
Run request (Fill employee hierarchy)


2. Employee/Supervisor approval hierarchy
Employee/Supervisor approval hierarchy is defined by the employee /supervisor relationship.
The supervisor of an employee is defined as the superior approval relationship for the Employee form.If the purchase order entered by the employee exceeds the approval limits, the purchase order is forwarded onto the employees’ supervisor, as defined on the Employee form.


Required set up :
DefineJobs
Define Approval Groups


3. AME – Approval Management Engine (for requisitions only)
Release 12.0 of Oracle Purchasing further expands and enhances integration with theOracle Approvals Management product for approval routing of purchase requisitions.
This integration gives enterprises even more flexibility to configure their businessapproval processes. Key enhancements include:

• Position Hierarchy based Approvals
• Position based hierarchies allow organizations the flexibility to create reporting structures that remain stable regardless of personnel changes. 
•  Enterprises already using position hierarchies via Oracle Approval Management can immediately leverage those hierarchies for the requisition approvals process.
• Parallel Approvals
•  The Parallel Approvals functionality gives enterprises the option to speed up theapprovals process by routing a requisition to multiple approvers simultaneously.
• Support for FYI Notifications
• Certain individuals or business roles need to be kept informed of purchases and decisions, but do not necessarily need to take action against that notification. 
• Release12.0 provides new functionality to allow certain individuals or roles to review thepurchases, but do not require any response from the recipient.

DETERMINATION OF APPROVAL ROUTING METHOD
There are two forms that determine the route that an approval will take: 

1. Financial Options (PO -> Setup -> Options -> Financial -> Human Resources) 
2. Document Types (PO -> Setup ->Purchasing Options -> Document Types)