Buyer spend limits
A personal limit is the amount one person may order without anybody signing for it. It decides how much of the customer's ordering never reaches an approver, which makes it the setting most worth getting right.
Two amounts, two places
| Amount | Where | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Personal limit (Monetary limit) | Procurement › Cost centres › Personal limits | The ceiling the Personal limit condition of an approval rule measures a cart against |
| Order approval limit | On the contact, in the CRM | A recorded value shown on the contact. Approval routing does not read it |
Who approves what, and how much they may sign, is decided by the approval rules alone. Setting an order approval limit on a contact does not change which approvals reach them or which they may decide. If the customer's policy is "the site manager signs up to €25,000, above that the managing director", that is two value bands on the rules, not a number on the site manager.
What a personal limit is
- One per contact. A contact has at most one personal limit, for everything they order. There is no per-cost-centre limit.
- A gate, not a wallet. Each submitted cart is compared against it on its own. Nothing is deducted, so it is not a monthly allowance. Ten carts of €900 each pass a €1,000 limit ten times. If the customer worries about the total, they need a budget.
- No limit, no gate. A contact without a personal limit is never caught by the Personal limit condition. There is no tenant-wide default.
- Its own currency. The limit carries a currency, set to the tenant's default currency when created in the Cockpit. A cart in another currency is refused rather than compared.
Global rule or cost-centre rule
The limit is one number; the rule decides what it is measured against.
- A global Personal limit rule (no cost centre) compares the buyer's limit with the whole cart. This is what most customers mean by "he can spend up to two thousand".
- A Personal limit rule on a cost centre compares the same limit with only the part of the cart booked to that centre, and only that centre's chain gets the approval step.
So "the facility manager may order up to €5,000 on building services without approval" is a Personal limit rule on the building-services centre plus a €5,000 limit on the facility manager. The limit cannot be €5,000 there and €300 elsewhere; for that, use a Constant limit rule on the other centres.
How the limit meets the other rules
At checkout every active rule is asked, then:
- Does any rule Prevent? Then the submit is refused. No request, no order.
- Does any rule require approval? Every Pending order rule that caught the cart adds a step. A personal limit exceeded and a budget exceeded are two steps, so both signatures are collected.
- Nothing caught it? The order is placed directly and the budget is spent in one step.
Two consequences to say plainly to the customer:
- A generous personal limit does not defeat a budget rule. Someone with a €10,000 limit still raises a request when the cost centre has €400 left, if an Available budget rule watches it.
- A tight personal limit does not protect an unbudgeted cost centre. It produces approvals, not control over the year's total.
Set one
- Open Procurement › Cost centres › Personal limits and choose New personal limit.
- Pick the contact and enter the monetary limit. Leave a contact without a row if they should have none.
- Make sure a rule with the condition Personal limit and the effect Pending order (needs approval) exists. Without it the limit is documentation.
For many contacts at once, the list takes a CSV import keyed on the contact, so a re-import updates the existing limits.
Temporary changes
Limits move. Somebody covers a colleague's Elternzeit, a shutdown week needs higher ceilings. Raise the limit, and write down the date it goes back: a limit raised for two weeks and never lowered is the commonest way an approval policy quietly stops matching the one the auditor was shown. A changed limit applies to carts submitted afterwards; requests already waiting keep their steps.
There is no deputy for approvers. If the problem is an approver who is away, not a buyer who needs more room, the fix is a Role approver on the rule rather than a raised limit; see Approval rules.
What to check
- Have the contact submit a cart slightly under their limit against a cost centre with budget left. The order should be placed directly.
- Have them submit one slightly over it. A purchase request should appear under Procurement › Purchase requests, with the step you expect on its Approvals tab.
- Have a contact with no personal limit submit the same cart. The Personal limit rule should not catch it.
Next
- Approval rules: the rule that reads the limit.
- Approvals that get stuck: what to do when a step waits.