Purchase

An AFE — Authorization for Expenditure — is required when a requisition is extraordinary or exceeds its budget. This tutorial gives the order of the steps; the functions themselves are described in the documentation under AFE Approval, and the controlling option of the accrual report under Purchase Order Reports.

Suggested order

1. Set the prerequisites first. Grant the approval right to the roles that decide, and the override right only to those who are meant to carry that responsibility. Make sure every site that can trigger an AFE has an owner contact with a business e-mail — without it the send step cannot address anyone.
2. Know which trigger you are dealing with. Extraordinary Expenses blocks the approval of the requisition itself. A budget overrun does not — it is checked further along, when the purchase order is created. Looking for the block in the wrong place is the most common confusion here.
3. Fill out the AFE, then attach the signed document. An AFE cannot be approved without a file — the signed form, the owner's mail as PDF, or a screenshot of the approval.
4. Approve, or submit for approval. Whoever holds the approval right signs off directly; everyone else hands it to management with the same button, which is labelled differently for them.
5. Remember the budget is separate. Approving an AFE does not raise a limit. In the overrun case the limit has to be raised in the same dialog, otherwise the purchase order stays blocked — this is the step most often missed.
6. Prepare in parallel where you can. Selecting a quotation or choosing suppliers is deliberately possible while the approval is still running. Nothing is ordered by those steps.

Good to know beforehand

There is exactly one AFE per requisition, reachable from the requisition, the request for quotation and the purchase order alike. An approved AFE is final; a rejected one can be filled out again, and the rejection reason is shown before it is resubmitted.

Every step is recorded in the requisition history, including an override and an approval that deliberately left the budget alone.