Overview
This post looks at why purchase order approvals stall in growing UK businesses. It covers the workflow tools in Business Central that fix slow, informal sign-off processes. You’ll also find where three-way matching and audit trails fit into the picture.
Every business buys things. Raw materials, components, packaging and equipment all need ordering, and the list never really shrinks.
Most companies require someone to approve a purchase before it goes out. That step exists for good reason, because it controls spending and keeps finance in charge of committed costs. Without it, orders slip through unchecked.
The trouble is that in a lot of UK businesses, approval is slow. Sometimes painfully slow.
A request sits in an inbox for three days. The approver is away, so the request bounces to the wrong person. Nobody is quite sure who signs off orders above a certain value, and the supplier starts chasing. Production waits on a component that hasn’t even been ordered yet, because the purchase order is stuck waiting for a signature.
This isn’t a people problem. It’s a process problem, and it’s one that Business Central is built to solve.
Why Purchase Order Approval Slows Down
Most approval bottlenecks come from one of three places.
The process is informal. Approvals happen by email, Teams message, or someone walking over to a manager’s desk, so there’s no clear route or escalation path. Nobody can see where a request sits at any given time.
The rules are unclear. Who approves a £500 order? What happens with a £5,000 order, and does the spend category matter? When your team doesn’t know the rules, they either guess or ask someone, which slows things down either way.
There’s no audit trail. When finance asks who approved a purchase, the answer means trawling through email threads. That’s nobody’s idea of a good use of a Friday afternoon.
Each of these problems is fixable, and Business Central gives you the tools to fix all three at once.
How Business Central Handles Purchase Order Approvals
Business Central includes a workflow engine that lets you build structured approval processes for purchase orders. You define the rules once, and the system applies them every time.
Here’s how it works in practice.
Approval Workflows
You set up approval workflows based on criteria that matter to your business, such as order value, the supplier, the item category, or the department placing the order. Tecvia configures this during implementation, so the rules match how your business already operates.
When a purchase order meets the criteria, it’s automatically routed to the right approver. The approver gets a notification, reviews the order in Business Central, and either approves or rejects it. If they reject it, they can add a reason, and the requester is notified either way.
There’s no email chasing and no ambiguity about where the order sits in the process.
Authorisation Limits
You can set authorisation limits for each user. A junior buyer might approve orders up to £1,000, while a department manager can go up to £10,000. Anything above that goes to finance or a director.
If an approver tries to sign off an order above their limit, Business Central escalates it automatically to the next level. You don’t need to rely on people knowing the rules and following them, because the system enforces them.
Delegation And Absence Cover
One of the most common causes of approval delays is a single point of failure, such as one approver, one inbox, or one person on annual leave.
Business Central lets you set up delegation rules. If an approver is unavailable, requests route automatically to a nominated delegate, so your purchasing process keeps moving even when key people are out of the office. Our support team can help you configure delegation rules that fit your existing structure.
Approval History And Audit Trail
Every approval decision gets recorded in Business Central, including who approved it, when they approved it, and what the order value was. Whether it was escalated, and why, is captured too.
That audit trail is available instantly. When your finance team reviews committed spend, when an auditor asks for evidence of purchasing controls, or when management wants to understand a decision, the information is already there. This links closely to vendor management more broadly, since good supplier oversight depends on the same visibility.
Three-Way Matching
Approval before the order goes out is one control. Matching what arrives against what you ordered and what you were invoiced is another.
Business Central supports three-way matching between the purchase order, the goods receipt, and the supplier invoice. Before a supplier invoice is approved for payment, the system checks that quantity and price match what was ordered and received.
If there’s a discrepancy, the invoice gets flagged for review rather than passed straight to payment. This catches billing errors, quantity disputes, and duplicate invoices before they reach your accounts payable team.
For businesses processing a high volume of supplier invoices, three-way matching removes a significant amount of manual checking. It also reduces the risk of paying for something you never received.
Visibility Across The Purchasing Process
Beyond individual approvals, Business Central gives management a clear view of purchasing activity across the business.
You can see all open purchase orders, their approval status, and their expected delivery dates. You can track committed spend against budget, and identify which suppliers have outstanding orders or invoices awaiting payment. Our Business Central overview covers how this reporting fits alongside the rest of the platform.
For finance teams managing cash flow, that visibility matters, because nobody is waiting for someone to update a spreadsheet. The data is live in the system.
For operations teams managing production schedules or stock replenishment, knowing the status of an order without chasing the purchasing team is a genuine improvement to daily working.
Who This Is For
If your business processes more than a handful of purchase orders a week and relies on email or informal sign-off, you’re carrying unnecessary risk and unnecessary delay.
This is particularly relevant for manufacturers, where production depends on components arriving on time and purchase delays carry a direct operational cost. It also matters for distributors and wholesalers managing high volumes of supplier orders, where errors and delays affect customer service. Food and beverage businesses rely on purchasing controls as part of supplier management and compliance, so the same logic applies there too. The same is true for life sciences businesses, where audit readiness depends on the same approval and matching controls.
Beyond these sectors, any UK business that has grown past the point where informal purchasing is good enough stands to benefit. Business Central gives you a purchasing process that’s controlled, auditable, and fast enough to keep things moving. For a wider look at where these controls fit, our guide on features you’re already paying for but not using covers workflow automation in more depth. If you’re weighing up Business Central more broadly, our piece on what an ERP system actually does is a useful starting point, and our guide to choosing an ERP consultant explains why implementation experience matters.
Ready To Fix Your Approval Process
Slow purchase order approvals cost you time, money, and supplier goodwill. Tecvia configures Business Central’s approval workflows, authorisation limits, and audit trails to match how your business actually works.
Get in touch for a free consultation, or ask us for a demo tailored to your purchasing process. Our team has handled implementation for manufacturers and distributors across the UK, so we know where the common bottlenecks sit. Contact Tecvia to talk through your approval process.
FAQs
For anything not covered here, get in touch directly. We’re happy to answer questions specific to your business and your ERP requirements.
You define the approval rules in Business Central based on order value, supplier, category, or department. When a purchase order meets the criteria, it routes automatically to the right approver. The approver is notified, reviews the order, and approves or rejects it in the system.
Yes. You assign authorisation limits to each user. Orders above a user’s limit escalate automatically to the next level of approval. The system enforces the limits without relying on users to know and follow the rules.
You can set up delegation rules so that if an approver is absent, requests route to a nominated delegate automatically. This prevents approval queues from building up when key people are out of the office.
Three-way matching compares the purchase order, the goods receipt, and the supplier invoice. If the quantities or prices do not match, the invoice is flagged for review before it is approved for payment. This reduces errors and prevents payment for goods not received.
Yes. Every approval decision is recorded in Business Central, including who approved it, when, and at what value. This gives your finance team and auditors a complete, searchable audit trail without trawling through email.
Yes. Open purchase orders represent committed spend in Business Central. Finance teams can view committed spend by department, supplier, or category in real time without waiting for invoices to be processed.
Yes. Business Central’s workflow engine supports multi-level approval hierarchies, delegation rules, and condition-based routing. Whether your approval process has two levels or six, the workflow can be configured to match.
