How do Contract approvals work in Cotiss?
Each contract creation or variation in Cotiss requires an approval process depending on what has been added or changed within the contract shell. Your approval process may require only one individual from your team or a sequence of team members and departments (eg. Legal> Finance>Procurement) to action the approval.
Approval sequences are usually categorised by contracts above or below certain values or certain contract types however this configuration is completely up to you and your organisations preferences.
If you do not have any approval sequences set up yet, you can configure them within your approval sequence settings.
How do Procurement approvals work in Cotiss?
Each Procurement event in Cotiss requires a 'Go-to-market' approval process before a procurement request is sent out to market for vendors to begin their responses.
During the set up of a sourcing request, your go-to-market approval process can be made up of either one approver or a handful of approvers to confirm the go-to market information for that request is correct and ready for the market.
This is a mandatory step and can only be assigned to users with the 'approver' role (see User roles and permission).
When the go-to-market approvers are set, an email is sent out to them all at once, to action their approval(s). Once all of the go-to-market approval tasks are complete, the procurement manager can 'Publish' the Request to progress it to the 'active' stage ready for Vendors to be invited.
What is the approval lifecycle?
In order for a contract to be published or a sourcing event to go-to-market, all approval steps must be approved. Each approval goes through the following lifecycle:
Pending Approval: A contract draft, contract variation or sourcing request has been sent for approval
Approved: The approver has confirmed their approval
Rejected: The approver has rejected their approval
Approvers have the option to either approve or reject with comments, if an approval is rejected, it will have to be re-requested before being re-approved to ensure updates are made.
If any approver in the approval sequence or group rejects their approval, all other approvals will have to be re-sent.
How can I action an approval task?
Approvals can be actioned via the Tasks page where all approval tasks are located (either Procurement Approvals or Contract Approvals).
When you are assigned as an approver for a Contract or a Procurement event within Cotiss, you will receive an email with a magic link that navigates you to the Tasks Page.
If you are already working within Cotiss - You can also access and process your approval tasks by simply navigating to the Tasks page.
Once you reach the Tasks Page follow these steps to process your approval:
Select which approval tab you wish to enter (Procurement approvals or Contract Approvals)
Click the 'View' button next to the item you are requested to approve
Read the Contract information, Requester comments and the Approval task by clicking on the 'View changes' button
Make your approval decision by selecting the 'Reject' or 'Approve' buttons in the top right
Add comments to add more detail to your decision and click 'Confirm'
Your approval will now be complete and the Procurement or Contract managers can progress with their Sourcing events and Contracts as required.