“VP and CFO to 500,000; above that three Chief Officers, or two VPs with the CFO and the CEO.”
That is an ordinary line from a delegation-of-authority schedule. Almost no procurement system can express it. Your own titles. More than one signature, in a set order. An alternative signer. All of it per department.
Named levels, ranked, and bands per part of the business.
The approval matrix answers “what rank must sign”. This answers the question a real schedule asks: how many signatures, from whom, in what order, for which part of the business.
- Your wordsHead of Department, VP, CFO, CEO — your titles, not ours. Rank decides the order signatures are asked for
- ScopedA company-wide ladder, then an override for a department, a division, a category or a cost centre. The most specific rule governs
- Alternatives“Three Chief Officers, or two VPs with the CFO and the CEO” is two routes, and either one completing is enough
- It is the authorityWhere a schedule is set, it decides who may sign: whoever you place on a level may sign the bands naming it, whatever their job title. Placing somebody on a level IS granting authority to commit money. Leave it empty and nothing changes
Who has signed, who is being asked, and who is next.
The route is resolved once, when the requisition is submitted, and frozen there. Editing the schedule mid-flight cannot re-open something already approved, or add a signature nobody was asked for.
- Rules applied unaskedPeople at the same level sign in any order; a higher level is only asked once the level below it is complete
- A committee needs peopleOne person can never fill two seats of the same level on one purchase, even where they hold two titles during a vacancy
- Cover for leaveA signature can move sideways to a peer, or up a level. Never down. Who moved it and why is recorded
- Re-tested on changeRevising the value resolves the route again from scratch, because a different figure can fall in a different band
A row per step, and the least senior person who may approve there.
Two roles and one figure fits a small company and little else. The matrix takes a row for each step in your delegation — a department head, a finance director, a procurement committee, a council resolution.
- ValueEach row applies at or above its value, in the group's reporting currency. A band cannot be evaded by entering the figure in another currency
- Named peopleA row can name specific approvers rather than anyone holding the role
- Where the ladder belongsA requisition is a budget authorisation and normally needs one signature. The full ladder belongs on the award recommendation — that is where money is committed to a supplier
- No quiet overrunsA competition that comes back above the requisition that authorised it goes back for approval at the real figure. No order issues until it does
Four controls almost no software has, all on the checklist.
Each can warn rather than refuse, and each has its own off switch. Whether two purchases are really one is a judgement somebody has to make, and a control that cries wolf is one people click past.
- Split purchasesRequisitions on the same cost centre, in the same category, inside a window are added up. If the total needs a higher approval than any one of them, it is flagged
- Supplier aggregatesCatches what splitting cannot: a buyer with a 25,000 limit placing 25,000 with the same supplier forty times, where no threshold is ever crossed
- Segregation of dutiesEntering a supplier's bank details and verifying them, and entering them and releasing payment to them — the fake-vendor path
- Budget ownerThe person whose cost centre is being charged signs first, ahead of the value ladder, even when they sit in another department
