AFE Approval

AFE stands for Authorization for Expenditure — a formal document the office prepares to justify a requisition that is either out of the ordinary or exceeds the available budget. It is typically sent to the site owner, signed or approved by e-mail, and returned before the requisition may continue.

The AFE belongs to the process, not to a single document: there is exactly one AFE per requisition, and it is reachable from the requisition, from the request for quotation with a supplier assigned, and from the purchase order.

The function has to be switched on in the purchasing configuration — the setting is called Use AFE (Extraordinary Expenses + Budget Overrun). Where it is off, nothing described here appears.

When an AFE is required

Either of two things triggers it:

Extraordinary Expenses is ticked on the requisition, or
the requisition would push its cost account over the budget limit for the current period — the pie chart under the header turns red.

An information block under the pie chart then reads AFE required (extraordinary expenses) or AFE required (budget overrun). Once the AFE has been approved, that block turns green and reads AFE approved — on the requisition, the request for quotation and the purchase order alike.

If neither applies, no AFE is needed and the requisition is approved as before.

If the budget graphics are switched off. Some installations hide them with the Show Budget Check option. The check still runs: when a request exceeds its budget, the AFE block with the Fill Out button appears anyway, only the pie chart stays hidden.

Several cost accounts on one request. The block then lists every assigned account with its own budget, identically on requisition, request for quotation and purchase order.

Where the requirement actually blocks

The two triggers block at different points, which is worth knowing before hunting for a supposed fault.

Extraordinary Expenses blocks the approval of the requisition itself.

A budget overrun does not block the plain requisition approval. It is checked along the procurement path instead:

Situation	What is checked	Effect
Requisition straight to purchase order, no quotation step	The requisition estimate against the limit, when the purchase order is created	Blocked until the AFE is filled out, submitted, approved and the limit actually raised
Selecting a single quotation	The offered prices, at the moment of selection	You are asked to fill out an AFE. Once one exists, the quotation can be selected — approval is enforced later, at the purchase order
Selecting suppliers line by line	The selected values per cost account, when saving	You may cancel and revise, or save anyway; saving creates the AFE task and the purchase order stays blocked until approval
Creating the purchase order from a request for quotation	Whether an existing AFE is approved	Blocked while the AFE is pending, submitted or rejected

The decisive check therefore happens at one single point: the creation of the purchase order. Nothing is ordered by selecting a quotation, so preparing the purchase while the approval is still running is deliberately possible — but no purchase order is created against an exceeded budget without an approved AFE.

Seeing the status in the overview

The tree of the purchase overview carries an AFE column showing the status per document as a symbol: empty (no AFE yet), filled out, submitted, approved, or rejected. This tells you from the list which requests still need attention. The column only appears where the AFE function is switched on.

Four rules govern the AFE itself:

One AFE per requisition. Filling it out again updates the existing one; no second AFE is created.
An approved AFE is final and can no longer be edited.
Resubmitting is possible. A submitted or rejected AFE may be filled out again, which resets the status so it passes through approval once more.
A rejection reason is not lost. Resubmitting shows the reason the approver gave, and the attached file and remark are kept.

Filling it out

Click Fill Out next to the AFE block. A form based on the configured template opens — this is the existing expenses form, unchanged. Fill it in and save. The template is fixed at that moment: switching the configured template later affects new AFEs only, and the AFE stays assigned to its requisition either way.

The approval dialog

Click Approve next to the AFE block. The dialog shows:

Field	Meaning
Status	Pending (filled out, not signed off), Submitted - waiting for approval, Approved, or Rejected.
File	The signed AFE or the owner's approval mail. Display-only — it is filled by the `Add` button, never typed into.
Remark	Free text for whatever the next reviewer or an auditor should know.
Approved by / Timestamp	Filled automatically, read-only.

The main button depends on your rights. With AFE approval rights it reads Approve and signs the AFE off directly. Without them it reads Submit for Approval, which hands the AFE to management and sets the status to Submitted - waiting for approval. Both are recorded in the history.

The other actions:

Reject sets the status to rejected — state the reason in the remark. The requisition cannot be approved through the normal path while an AFE is rejected.
Reset to Pending puts the status back. File, remark, approver and timestamp are kept on purpose so the audit trail stays complete; removing an attached file is an administrator's job. Available only with the AFE approval right or the management override right.

Attaching the signed document

A file is required before an AFE can be approved — approving without one is refused. Accepted is the signed AFE, the owner's approval mail exported as PDF, or a screenshot of the approval.

Use Add to pick the file; its name appears in the read-only File field, and it is stored with the AFE on approval. Show opens it for checking — the file just picked if there is one, otherwise the one already stored.

Sending it to the owner

Send creates an Outlook draft: addressed to the site owner's business e-mail, with a summary of the requisition and the AFE reason, and the exported AFE attached. The draft opens so it can be reviewed and edited — ZeeBORN never sends it for you, the send button in Outlook has to be pressed.

If no owner e-mail is on file, the recipient stays empty and has to be entered by hand. Making sure every site that can trigger an AFE has an owner contact with a business e-mail avoids this.

The requisition shows whether this has happened: a red Not yet sent to Owner box beforehand, turning turquoise with the date afterwards. The marker records when the draft was created, not whether it was actually sent from Outlook.

Export saves the filled-out form to a file instead — for sending it through another channel, keeping a copy, or filing it elsewhere. Both actions are recorded in the history.

Raising the budget limit

Approving an AFE does not by itself raise a budget. Where the trigger was an overrun, the limit is still exceeded afterwards and the requisition stays blocked, with a message saying the limit has to be increased in the approval dialog.

For that case the dialog contains an Increase Budget Limit section, and the main button reads Increase & Approve, so raising the limit and signing off happen in one step. With a single cost account it shows the current limit and a field for the new one; with several, a table lists every account that is over its limit, with what is already booked, this request's share, the overrun, and an editable new limit per row.

On confirmation the limit is updated and an entry is written recording old value, new value, reason, user, time and the references to AFE and requisition. From then on the pie chart uses the new limit.

Approving without raising the limit is possible — you are warned first, and the history records that the budget was not increased.

Both triggers at once. A request can be extraordinary and over budget. The budget section is offered then as well, including after the AFE has already been approved: reopening it through Manage in the AFE block still allows raising a limit that was deliberately left alone during the approval. As everywhere, the section is only offered to users holding the AFE approval right.

When approval is blocked

Trying to approve the requisition can be refused with:

Please fill out AFE form (extraordinary expenses) first. — an AFE is required but does not exist yet.
AFE for extraordinary expenses is not yet approved. — it exists, but its status is not Approved.

Along the procurement path the message speaks of the budget being exceeded by this document or by this quotation. Each message names the next step.

Management override. Holders of that right can approve despite a missing, pending or rejected AFE, or an exceeded budget. The block message still appears, followed by an extra confirmation. Every override is visible in the approval history — the right should be granted sparingly and only to roles meant to carry that responsibility.

What is recorded

Every AFE step writes an entry into the regular requisition history, with user, timestamp and document reference: filling out, submitting, exporting, sending, approving, rejecting, resetting, and each budget increase. Approving without raising the limit is recorded as such.

Each entry carries a view AFE link that opens the filled-out form directly, so an audit can move from the trail to the underlying document in one click. When an AFE is approved, a copy of the form is attached to the requisition as an internal document.

Entries cannot be deleted by users, and nothing is removed automatically. Correcting a wrong entry is an administrator's task.