Invoice Routing Configuration
Standard Forwarding Hierarchy Inherited
You can associate operating units (Organizations) with seeded purchasing document types to determine forwarding and approval methods. Approvers are found by the hierarchy setting in the settings in Financial Options for the operating unit. The hierarchy used is either:
- Position hierarchies
- Employee/supervisor relations in Oracle HR
The approval hierarchy is used to route invoices automatically for approval, and as part of escalations due to inactivity.
Position Hierarchy
When position hierarchies are used, the hierarchy is the active version on sysdate of the positions hierarchy which is set as Default Hierarchy on the document type which again is used as Approval Document Type in PROCESSIT for the operating unit. The operating unit is the organization to which the invoice belongs.
Invoices are routed to captured, mapped or manually selected coders per standard functionality. Any active user can be receive notifications for coding or approval regardless if they hold an active assignment within the appropriate approval hierarchy or not.
The forward method from the document type is also applied, hence an invoice may be routed directly to the first user with sufficient approval authority to approve the invoice or it may climb the ladder to get there.
To automatically route invoices to the next approver, the procedure follows the Default Hierarchy for the current users' position in the primary assignment on sysdate. If position is found in the hierarchy, the next approver is found accordingly.
If an approving user does not have sufficient authority to approve the entire set of invoice lines, the invoice is routed to the next approver found in positions hierarchy according to forward method.
The forwarding and approval structure is dependant on your approval groups and approval hierarchy. According to Oracle: "If you choose to use approval hierarchies, you must set up both jobs and positions, and you must define position approval hierarchies."
Employee/supervisor hierarchy
According to Oracle: "If you choose to use employee/supervisor relationships, you define your approval routing structures as you enter employees using the Enter Person window. In this case, Purchasing does not require that you set up positions."
More about hierarchies
Please refer to standard Oracle E-Business Suite documentation for details on approaval document and hierarchy settings. Details can be found for instance here Setting up Document Approval.
See Approval for further details in approval processes and options.