Shipments that need approval

Organizations that use approvals choose which shipments need a manager's decision. This article covers what happens when you ship one, and how an approver decides.

What sends a shipment for approval

Your organization sets the triggers. A shipment waits for approval when it meets one of them:

• a restricted service,
• an international destination,
• a declared value over your organization's limit,
• a cost over your organization's limit.

If you are shipping

1. Create the shipment as usual and choose Create Shipment.
2. The shipment page says it is waiting for approval and who it is routed to. No label is created and nothing is billed yet.
3. When it is approved, the label is created. Open the shipment and choose Print label.
4. If it is denied, you are told, with the approver's note if they wrote one.

If there is no approver above you, the shipment goes ahead without approval.

If you approve shipments

1. Open the Operations menu and choose Approvals. The list of waiting requests is on one side and the selected request on the other. The arrow keys move through the list. Routed to me shows the requests you decide. All pending in my scope shows the rest, read only: only the approver a request is routed to can decide it.
2. Select a request. It shows who asked and their reason, why it needs a decision, where it is going, the service, the cost center and the quoted total if your role shows prices.
3. To approve, choose Approve.
4. To deny, choose Deny. You can add a note, which the requester reads and which is kept in the audit trail. On a phone, Deny opens a sheet titled Deny this request, where you finish with Deny request.

Chips on a request say escalated or past SLA.

When nobody decides

Your organization sets a timer. By default:

1. After 120 minutes, a reminder goes out.
2. After 240 minutes, the request moves up one step to the next approver and stays on hold, flagged, until someone decides. There is one such step. If your organization chose automatic approval, the request is approved at this point instead and the shipment goes back to a draft; finish it with Continue this shipment.
3. Automatic approval never applies to requests to change a shipment's privacy setting.

Every step, including automatic ones, is recorded in the Audit Trail. Turning off approval emails in Preferences stops the emails only. Requests still arrive in Approvals and still move up on the timer.