A Guide to Setting Up Approval Workflows in Business Central

Do you ever feel like your business processes get bogged down by manual approvals? There is a world where purchase orders are automatically routed to the right people for review and overdue approvals are flagged for a gentle nudge, you know?. And with Dynamics 365 Business Central’s approval workflows, that world is within reach!

This guide will walk you through setting up approval workflows in Business Central, step-by-step. From defining your approval hierarchy to sending overdue reminders, we’ll cover everything you need to streamline your approvals process and free yourself (and your team) from tedious tasks.

The approval workflow allows you to automate approval processes within Business Central. Starting from approval users we can control the users that needs to approve a transaction to allow the transaction to be Posted or to continue the process. The system can also create notifications and send overdue requests to remind approvers that an action is needed from them.

Approval User Setup in Business Central

Firstly you will need to set up the ‘Approval User Setup’ page. Here you will need to set up all the users that will be part of the approval workflow: Set Up Approval Users – Business Central | Microsoft Docs.

For this example, I have set up the below approval users:

 
Approval Workflow Example

We will follow through a Purchase Order approval for this example.

Purchase Approval Workflow in Business Central

The workflow is the following:

The first Event on the work flow is the creation of the purchase order this creates the request and starts the workflow response.

This is known as the ‘parent’ event, the conditions against the Event must be met. In this example the condition is for the Purchase Order to be created as an open order.

The workflow response can have multiple steps each step can be customised.

The workflow response in this workflow shows ‘Add record restriction’ if you click on the response this will then list all of the response actions that link.

‘Add record restriction’ means that, in this case, the Purchase order can´t be posted until the restriction is removed.

If you wish to see more on restricted records here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/across-how-to-restrict-and-allow-usage-of-a-record

When the approval request is approved, we can see that the first step is to remove the record restriction and then release the document.

Now we can create a Purchase Order e to test the approval workflow. First, you can show the approval fact box to see the status of the approval.

Once we have the Purchase order created, we can send the approval request.

The status on the document changes to ‘Pending Approval’ and we can see the information of the approval on the fact box we just populated.

Requests to Approve in Business Central

The approval request will update the ‘Requests to Approve’, this can be found on the home screen.

From within the Requests to approve screen this will show the approval request:

From here you can approve, reject, or delegate the approval. Once the transaction is approved the status of the document turns to ‘Released’.

But if we reject it, the status will turn to open meaning that this document has been rejected and can´t be posted. We can also delegate and the status will remain in ‘Pending Approval’ until somebody accepts or rejects.

In my example we will Approve the Purchase order.

 
Approval Entries in Business Central

The Approval entries screen will show all approval entries. Each user can only see their approval entries. The only user that has access to all the entries is the approval administrator which is defined in the ‘Approval User Setup’.

 
Approval Request Entries

It basically displays the same information as the ‘Approval Entries’ page. It is also filtered for each user so they can only see their approvals.

Send Overdue Approval Notifications in Business Central

When an approval doesn't receive a response from the approver we can send overdue approval notifications with the following option:

If you receive the below error warning this is due to the setup not being configured.

You will need to up a specific workflow to send overdue approvals. To do this you will need to open the work flow page and from here you can create new workflow from template MS-OVERDUE-01:

Once enable this will then allow you to send a notification for overdue approvals.

If we now, try to run the task again this message will appear notifying that overdue approval entries have been created:

From the ‘Overdue Approval Entries’ page. You can see the overdue approvals have been created.

You can choose the notification method in the ‘Workflow Notification Setup’ page:

Posted Approval Entries in Business Central

Once the approved transaction is posted these will then show within the Posted approval entries screen.

 
By implementing approval workflows in Business Central, you can gain greater control over your financial processes, ensure proper oversight and free up valuable time for more strategic work – win-win!