Approvals

An optional approval gate on Rental Quotes and Rental Orders, 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.

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.

Before you start

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

  1. The Rental Quote Approval Workflow or Rental Order Approval Workflow (or both) 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.

Both templates live in the H2BRENTAL workflow category. 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 rental approval 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.

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.

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.

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