Order Approval

B2B customer organizations can use the order approval functionality to review orders before they are sent to merchants. The order approval includes two checks:

(1) Cost Center Approval
If an order is assigned to a cost center, it must first be approved by the cost center manager, before being routed to the user-specific order approval.

(2) User-Specific Order Approval
If there is a budget or an order spend limit defined for a user, the order must pass the user-specific order approval.

If there is neither a cost center nor a user budget/order spend limit involved, no order approval takes place.

Workflow

When an order is placed that requires approval due to a cost center assignment, the system sends an e-mail to the cost center manager prompting for approval. The cost center manager then approves or rejects the order.

If the order additionally requires a user-specific order approval, the system sends an e-mail to all users with the Approver role, prompting them to approve or reject the order. Any approver can then do so.

Once the order is approved by all involved roles, it is finally submitted to the merchant.

Cost center managers and approvers see all orders that are subject to approval in their Dashboard and in the Approvals section of the My Account area. From there, they access the order and approve or reject it. When rejecting an order, cost center managers and approvers are prompted to give a reason.

Particularities for the Subscriptions Handling

Generally, a subscription is an one-time triggered, but periodically executed purchase of certain products or services. In subscription-based business models, consequently, customers pay periodically to use or receive a defined set of products at a regular base.

The B2X edition of Intershop Commerce Management supports subscription models via recurring orders.

Subscriptions have different approval rules compared to one-time purchases.

• The user-specific order approval is always required irrespective of the configured budget.
• The approval page for the approver shows the recurrence information, so that the approver is aware to approve a subscription (recurring order).
• The responsible cost center manager must also approve the subscription.

NOTE: A subscription, which was once approved through all instances, never needs an additional approval, even if the subscription was deactivated and reactivated later on.