Inventory journal approval workflow

12 minutes

This unit describes how to set up and use inventory journal approval workflows for various types of physical inventory transactions, such as issues and receipts, inventory movements, bills of materials (BOMs), and the reconciliation of physical inventory. Inventory journal workflows help ensure that people can only post approved inventory journals to transactions.

Note

Inventory journal approval workflows apply only to transactions that you record by using the Inventory management module. They don't work with inventory journals that are triggered from the Warehouse management module.

Create your inventory journal approval workflows

To set up the feature to create inventory journal approval workflows, you must create a workflow for each inventory journal type that you want to control. Because different inventory journal types can have different approval hierarchies and workflow steps, you can configure individual workflows for each inventory journal type.

Workflows support version control, and each has a workflow ID and an active version. You can choose to activate each new workflow version immediately on creation or keep it inactive. If you need different workflows for the same journal type, then create multiple workflows for that journal type. Then, you can assign each workflow to a different journal name that uses that type.

To create your inventory journal approval workflows:

Go to Inventory management > Setup> Inventory management workflows.
Select New on the Action Pane.
Choose the inventory journal type for which you want to set up a workflow:
- Inventory tag counting journal
- Inventory ownership change journal
- Inventory movement journal
- Inventory transfer journal
- Inventory counting journal
- Inventory BOM journal
- Inventory adjustment journal
The workflow editor app launches on your computer. (You might be asked to approve this action.) Use it to design your workflow as needed. For more information, see Workflow system overview.
After saving and closing the workflow editor app, you must choose whether to activate this workflow version or keep it as inactivate.

Note: Workflows provide version control, which means that you can view a list of versions that you created and choose which one is active. To view the list of available versions and choose which to activate, select a workflow from the Inventory management workflows page. On the Action Pane, open the Workflow tab and select Versions. Only one version can be active at a time for each workflow ID.

Assign approval workflows to inventory journal names

The next step is to assign an inventory journal workflow to each inventory journal name. For each inventory journal type, you can set up multiple inventory journal names.

To associate an inventory journal workflow with an inventory journal name, follow these steps:

Go to Inventory management > Setup > Journal names > Inventory.
Select a journal name from the list column to open its settings page.
On the General FastTab, set Approval workflow to Yes. If the system prompts you to approve the action, select Yes.
Open the Workflow dropdown list and select the appropriate workflow. The list shows each active workflow that you created by using the workflow editor app.

Create an inventory journal and send it for approval

After you associate an inventory journal name with its matching inventory journal approval workflow, you can create new inventory journals that use that name and then send these journals for approval by using that workflow. You can't post the inventory journal until the approvers who are configured in the workflow approve it.

On the navigation pane, expand Inventory management > Journal entries > Items and then select an inventory journal type.
Select New to create a new journal of your selected type.
The Create inventory journal dialog opens. Fill out the page as needed and then select OK to save the journal.
Complete the journal as required.
When you create or open an inventory journal with an approval workflow associated with it, the Workflow button is active on the Action Pane. When you're ready to submit the journal for approval, select the Workflow button to open a dropdown dialog and then select Submit. The approval request routes to the relevant approver, who's alerted through the notification method that you set up for the workflow.

To recall an approval request, open the relevant journal, select the Workflow button, and then select Recall. This action resets the workflow.

When your journal is approved, you can post it. To post the journal, select Post from the Action Pane. If the Post button isn't active, the journal isn't approved yet.

Respond to an inventory journal approval request

If you're an approver, you should receive a message whenever your approval is needed (as it's set up in the relevant workflow). Then, you can approve or reject a journal approval request by doing the following:

On the navigation pane, expand Inventory management > Journal entries > Items and then select an inventory journal type.
Open the relevant journal and review it.
Select the Workflow button on the Action Pane to open a dropdown dialog. Select one of the following options:
- Approve - Approve the request.
- Reject - Reject the request.
- More > Request change - Send a message to the requester asking them to change something specific and then resubmit.
- More > Delegate - Delegate the approval to another user.
- More > Recall - Recall the approval request (resets the workflow).
- More > Workflow history - View the history of this approval workflow so far.

Review the approval history

As with other types of workflows, you can use the Workflow history page to view the approval workflow history for any journal.

To review the workflow history for a journal, follow these steps: