Purchase requests and approvals, without the WhatsApp chaos

A supermarket in Al Qusais has a manager for fresh food, one for dry goods and a cashier who looks after the cleaning supplies. All three order from suppliers. The owner finds out what was bought when the invoices arrive, and twice a month something is ordered twice, from the more expensive supplier, because nobody checked.

The usual fix is a rule: "ask me first on WhatsApp". It works until the owner is at a wedding, or the message is lost between forty others, or someone writes "approved?" at midnight and takes the silence as a yes.

A request instead of a message

With Procurement switched on, anyone with the right to raise purchase requests asks for goods in CreekPOS itself: the products and quantities, a reason, the date they are needed by and, for each line, a preferred supplier. Each line is priced at that supplier's latest price list, so the request already shows what it will cost.

Approvals by amount

In Settings → Procurement you set, per branch, two amounts. A request up to the first is approved as it is raised: nobody needs to look at a carton of tissues. A request above the second needs two approvals by two different people. In between, one approval is enough.

The owner chooses who approves: the first approvers and the second approvers, or, if nobody is named, managers with the approve right. Two rules never bend:

• the person who raised a request never approves it;
• nobody gives both approvals of the same request.

Requests wait in an approvals inbox, the oldest first. A rejection always carries a note, so the person who asked knows why. A request that waits too long raises an owner alert, and the daily summary has a line for what is waiting.

Monthly budgets per category

You can give a product category a monthly budget, soft or firm. When a request would pass a soft budget, it shows a warning. When it would pass a firm budget, it needs two approvals, whatever its amount. The dry-goods manager can still order rice in a busy month, but not without a second pair of eyes.

From approval to order

An approved request becomes a purchase order in one step: one order to one supplier, or one order per supplier when the lines come from different ones. Before ordering, you can also ask several suppliers for a quote by link and pick the best one (see supplier quotes by link).

When the goods arrive, they are received with a delivery note, and the supplier's invoice is checked against the order and the delivery before it is booked (see the three-way match).

Ask instead of searching

Ask your shop answers "what is waiting for my approval?" from the owner's phone. Three new rights in Team → Rights decide who may raise requests, approve them and record supplier invoices, so each person does only their part.

None of this is AI: the amounts, the steps and the budgets are exact rules you set.

Procurement is included in Online Restaurant and Chain, and an add-on for Online Retail at AED 49 a month before VAT. It needs Stock and Purchasing. Read the ERP page and the manual chapter.