Tips & Tricks: Temporarily assign approval authorisation to another user in SAP Business One

Need to give someone temporary approval authority? You can easily do this in SAP Business One for a fixed period of time, saving you having to remember to change their permissions back again. Also, users won’t be left with permissions after they should have been revoked, helping you keep everything in order.

Every organisation has people become unavailable for a variety of reasons – sometimes for a short time and sometimes extended. It’s not just holiday and sick leave you need to manage; it can also be when people are seconded to another role temporarily or for seasonal activity that might require different levels of autonomy for employees.

As you can’t afford to have your business operations slowed down or interrupted, you need to make sure you always have people available with the right system permissions to keep processes and workflows moving. However, you also need to make sure users don’t have unnecessary permissions that could lead to actions being authorised without the required oversight.

This is why SAP Business One includes the functionality to change a user to have Approver authority for a pre-defined period of time. By doing this you can ensure you adhere to best business practices and to industry track-and-trace regulations.

How to change an Authoriser in an approval process for a pre-defined period of time

1. From the SAP Business One Main Menu, choose Administration > Approval Process > Substitute Authorizer for Approval Templates:
   
2. In the Substitute Authorizer for Approval Templates window, in the Authoriser Code field, specify the user code of the authoriser you want to set up a substitute for.
3. In the Substitute Authorizer Code, specify the user you want to define as the substitute authoriser.
4. In the From Date and To Date fields, enter the date range during which you want the substitute to act as the approval process authoriser.
5. From the dropdown list in the Template Name field, select either All to select all templates or select Choose to open the List of Confirmation Templates window, in which you can specify the relevant templates.
6. Click the Update button

In the example below we are assigning the approvals to user PSU_2 while PSU_1 is unavailable, from Oct 24^th 2023 to Feb 1^st 2024, at which time the approval will revert back:

After a substitute authoriser entry has been created the Active field is selected by default. You can deselect the checkbox to deactivate the entry at any time.

This is yet another example of how SAP Business One is designed to ensure your business keeps on top of compliance, security and traceability…..and just makes your life that bit easier!

To help you utilise all the extensive functionality that SAP Business One has to offer, contact us today at Teamsoft and maximise the potential of your ERP. Our team of SAP qualified engineers and consultants are experienced at optimising business processes and implementing streamlined workflows, meaning your business gets the expertise it needs.

Do you have a question about using SAP Business One? Our team of experts have an in-depth knowledge and can offer practical advice on all aspects of the system.