Approvals

An optional approval gate on Rental Quotes, Rental Orders and Scrap Requests, wired through Business Central's standard workflow framework. Use it when a quote or order needs sign-off from a manager before it can be released to the customer or converted to a booking, or when a second person should agree before units are scrapped.

How it fits in

Approvals sit between the day-to-day rental clerk and the manager who has to bless the document before it goes live. The clerk builds the quote or order as normal, clicks Send Approval Request, and the document moves to Pending Approval. The approver finds it in their Approval Request Entries list (the same place they go for sales-side approvals), approves or rejects it, and the document is released or sent back for changes.

It uses BC's stock approval framework underneath, so anything you already know about how sales-document approvals behave applies here: User Setup chains, Approve / Reject / Delegate buttons, approval comments, the Approval Request Entries page, and the notifications that follow all work the same way.

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Approvals are entirely optional. If no approval workflow is enabled for Rental Quotes or Rental Orders, the Send Approval Request button is hidden and documents move through Open and Released exactly as before. Scrap requests work the same way: with no scrap approval workflow enabled, a request is processed straight from Open. See Scrap requests.

Before you start

Two things need to be in place for approvals to work:

  1. The Rental Quote Approval Workflow, Rental Order Approval Workflow or Scrap Request Approval Workflow (any or all of them) enabled in the Workflows page.
  2. An approver chain set up in User Setup for every user who will send documents for approval.

Both are standard BC setup steps; the rental workflow templates ship with the extension and appear in BC's Workflow Templates list automatically.

Enabling the workflow

Open the Workflows list and click New Workflow from Template. Pick one of:

Workflow Templates
H2BRENQAPW
Rental Quote Approval Workflow. Sends a quote for approval, releases it on approve, returns it to Open on reject or cancel.
H2BREORAPW
Rental Order Approval Workflow. Same shape as the Quote workflow, against the Rental Order.
H2BSCRAPAPW
Scrap Request Approval Workflow. Same shape again, against the Scrap Request: approve sets the request to Released, reject or cancel returns it to Open. See Scrap requests.

All three templates live in the H2BRENTAL workflow category, shown as Essential Rental. Once you've created the workflow from template, tick Enabled on the workflow card. You can adjust the approver-limit type (Direct Approver, Approver Chain, First Qualified Approver, Specific Approver) on the workflow step's response argument before enabling, exactly as for any standard sales approval workflow.

Configuring approvers

In the User Setup list, set the Approver ID field for every user who will send rental documents for approval. The engine walks the chain at send-time: it reads the sender's Approver ID, creates an Approval Entry for that user, and (if the workflow uses Approver Chain or First Qualified Approver) walks up the chain until it reaches a user with no Approver ID set.

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If a user clicks Send Approval Request and their User Setup record has no Approver ID configured, the action fails with a clear error: "No approver is configured for user {USERID}. Set User Setup.Approver ID before sending approval requests." A user with no User Setup record at all gets "Approval User Setup is missing for user {USERID}. Set it up before sending approval requests." The same checks apply to scrap requests. Set the Approver ID on the user's User Setup record and re-send.

Sending a document for approval

On either the Rental Quote card or the Rental Order card, the Request Approval action group holds two buttons:

Request Approval actions
Send Approval Request
Raises the workflow, creates Approval Entries for the resolved approver chain, and moves the document Status to Pending Approval. Visible only when no open approval entries exist for this document and the relevant workflow is enabled.
Cancel Approval Request
Withdraws an in-flight approval request. The Approval Entries are cancelled and the document returns to Open. Available to the sender (or anyone with permission to cancel) while the document is in Pending Approval.

While a quote or order is in Pending Approval, the lines are locked: Type, Quantity, Unit Price and other line edits are blocked until the document is either approved (and released), rejected (and returned to Open), or the request is cancelled. Header fields remain editable so the sender can keep the document tidy.

What the approver sees

The approver finds the request in the standard Approval Request Entries page (same list they use for sales-document approvals; rental requests appear inline alongside them). They can drill into the underlying Rental Quote or Rental Order from the entry to see the lines, customer, dates, and pricing before deciding.

From either the Approval Request Entries page or the rental document itself, the approver has four actions in the Approval action group:

Approver actions
Approve
Approves the entry. If this was the last approval needed in the chain, the document Status moves to Released and the sender is notified.
Reject
Rejects the entry. The document returns to Open, line edits are unlocked, and the sender is notified. Use an approval comment (see below) to explain what needs changing.
Delegate
Passes the entry to the approver's substitute (set on the approver's own User Setup record). Use this when the original approver is out and someone else needs to act on the request.
Comments
Opens the Approval Comment Line page for the document. Use it to leave a note for the sender (or for an audit trail) before approving or rejecting.

Status colour coding

Rental Quote and Rental Order list pages and card pages now colour-code the Status field so the document's stage is visible at a glance:

Status styling
Open
Green. The document is editable and not yet committed.
Pending Approval
Amber. The document has been sent for approval and is waiting on an approver action.
Released
Bold. The document is committed and can be shipped or converted.
Closed
Red. A quote that's been declined or expired, or an order that's fully invoiced and returned.
Illustration. The real screen can differ in detail. The Rental Orders list with one order in each status. The Rental Quotes list and the Status field on both cards use the same four styles. Six columns of the list are left out.

Approval Entries FactBox

A standard BC Approval FactBox appears on the right of the Rental Quote and Rental Order cards whenever the document has at least one open Approval Entry. It shows the current approver, when the request was sent, and the most recent approval comment, so the sender can see where the request is sitting without leaving the document.

When no open Approval Entries exist, the FactBox is hidden to keep the card clean.

Illustration. The real screen can differ in detail. A Rental Order that has been sent for approval. The FactBox is headed Approval. Its own Status is the status of the approval request, not of the order, and Comment says whether a comment has been left. Most fields of the General FastTab and the other FactBoxes are left out.

Quote-to-Order conversion

When the Rental Quote Approval Workflow is enabled, a quote in Open or Pending Approval cannot be converted to a Rental Order. The Make Order action checks that the quote has been Released (which only happens after the last approver has approved) and blocks the conversion otherwise.

If no Quote Approval Workflow is enabled, conversion behaves as before: the quote can be converted directly from Open without going through an approval gate.

Scrap requests

A scrap request takes units out of the fleet when it is processed. If you want a second person to agree first, create a workflow from the Scrap Request Approval Workflow template (H2BSCRAPAPW) and enable it. Approvers, User Setup and the Approval Request Entries page work exactly as for quotes and orders. For the scrap request itself, see Scrap Rental Items.

Scrap Request actions
Send Approval Request
Sends the request to the approver and moves its Status to Pending Approval. It can be chosen only while the request is Open and the workflow is enabled.
Cancel Approval Request
Withdraws the request from approval and returns it to Open. It can be chosen while an approval entry for the request is still open.
Process
Scraps the units. With the workflow enabled, it can be chosen only once the request is Released, which happens when the last approver approves. With no workflow enabled, it can be chosen while the request is Open. A request that is Pending Approval is always refused, even if the workflow has since been switched off.
Reopen
Returns a Released request to Open, so it can be changed or deleted. Its units stay on it, and still cannot be booked or shipped, until they are taken off or the request is deleted. With the workflow enabled, a reopened request has to be sent for approval again before it can be processed.

If the approver rejects the request, it goes back to Open. Nothing is scrapped, and if the request came from a maintenance order, that order is left as it was. Only an Open request can be changed: once it is Pending Approval or Released, its date, reason and units are locked.

When a request is processed it becomes a Posted Scrap, and its approval entries move with it: open the posted scrap and choose Approvals to see who it was sent to, and who approved it and when.

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While the scrap approval workflow is enabled, a fixed asset disposal posted by the accounts team does not retire its rental unit on its own, because that would skip the approval. The unit shows on Fleet and Asset Mismatches instead, to be scrapped with a request. See Scrap Rental Items.

Edge cases

Sender is also the approver. If a user with no Approver ID upstream of themselves sends their own quote or order for approval, BC auto-approves the entry inline at send-time. The document moves Open → Pending Approval → Released in a single click. This matches how standard BC sales approvals behave; in practice you'd configure a real approver chain so sign-off has meaning.

Approver Chain length. Approver Chain and First Qualified Approver walk every Approver ID upwards from the sender until they hit a user with no Approver ID set. Long chains create one Approval Entry per step, in sequence; each approver only sees the entry when their turn arrives.

Cancelling after partial approval. Cancel Approval Request cancels every open Approval Entry on the document and returns it to Open in one go, regardless of how many approvers have already acted.

Document changes during approval. Line edits are blocked while the document is Pending Approval. If the document needs changing during the approval cycle, the request must be Cancelled first; the document then returns to Open, the lines unlock, and a fresh Send Approval Request restarts the chain.

Related pages