Purchasing | Tradesimple Release Note: Auto-Expire Non-Approved Orders in the Fourth app

What's Changing?

New functionality that will 'expire' over-budget orders that are not approved by their cut-off date/time. 

• Enabled by Default? - No
• Set up by customer Admin? - Yes
• Enable via Support ticket? - Yes
• Affects configuration or data? - No

Release date: 1st June 2021

Reason for the Change

To prevent orders with delivery dates in the past from being approved, which can cause confusion for suppliers.

Customers Affected

Customers using budget approval in Tradesimple and the Ordering app.

Release Note Info/Steps

The expired orders functionality works alongside budget approval in Tradesimple.

• To activate budget approval, please submit a request with Fourth support

Activating Auto-Expire

• Go to Business Directory, search and select the company head office
• Select Manage > Edit details and tick the box against Auto Expire Stale Orders - see Fig.1

Fig.1 - Enabling Auto Expire Stale Orders

Uploading Financial Period Data

• Go to Messages > Send
• Use the Document Type drop-down and select Financial Period File
• Browse to the location of the stored file, then Upload

Fig.2 - Uploading a Financial Periods File

Uploading Budget Values Data

• Follow the same steps as above, but select Budget Values File from the Document Type drop-down

Fig.3 - Uploading a Budget Values File

For more information on Financial Periods and Budget Values, please see the following articles:

• Tradesimple: Financial Periods Files
• Tradesimple: Budget Values Files

Auto-Expire Functionality

If a budget value is set for a supplier and an order is placed with them that exceeds that set budget, the order will require approval.

Example: The supplier budget for 'Panta Foods' at the 'Covent Garden' location is set to £100. When the location places an order with that supplier at a value of £400, the message shown in Fig.4 is displayed when checking out the basket.

Whoever is placing the order will then have to select Send for Approval.

Fig.4 - Approver message on ordering app UI

When the approver logs in to the Fourth app, their Notifications area will display the message as shown in Fig.5.

Fig.5 - Notifications for order approval

Selecting the notification will take the approver to the Tasks area.

Selecting the 3 dots gives the option to Approve, Reject, or Open Ordering - see Fig.6.

Fig.6 - Approve/Reject/see order option

When the order is approved or rejected, a notification is sent to the orderer.

  If the approver doesn't do this before the cut-off date/time then the order expires automatically and is removed from the Tasks area.

A notification is then sent to the orderer - see Fig.7.

Fig.7 - Expired order notification