← Tenderely BPM
MODULE
Purchase approval in a single traceable flow.
Purchasing is the process that generates the most e-mail in a company and leaves the least trace. Who asked, who approved, which quote was chosen and why — six months later those answers usually live in somebody's inbox. Tenderely BPM ties the request, the quotes, the approval and the order into one record, without code.
What does a purchasing process repeat?
01
Raising a request
Whoever needs something states what, how much and why. When the request is a free-text message, comparing requests becomes impossible.
02
Collecting quotes
Prices come in from several suppliers. If the quotes never sit side by side, "the best offer" becomes a matter of opinion.
03
The approval chain
Approval steps that change with the amount: line manager, department head, finance. Every step that stalls holds the process for days.
04
Budget check
Which budget line the spend comes from, and whether that line still has room, has to be visible before approval — not after.
05
Order and delivery
An approved request becomes an order; delivery dates, partial deliveries and delays need tracking.
06
Invoice matching
Does the invoice match the order and what was actually delivered? An invoice that does not match gets paid anyway if nobody notices.
Where does this break down today?
Approvals get lost in e-mail
An approval is a reply. It queues in a manager's inbox and stays there if nothing chases it, and the requester forgets who they even asked.
Quotes are not comparable
One is a PDF, one a chat message, one was given over the phone. Because they never sit in one table, the reason for the choice is never written down either.
The limit rule lives on paper
"Above 50k needs the director" is written in a policy document, but enforcing it depends on someone remembering. When they do not, it surfaces in an audit.
The total only appears afterwards
How much was committed against each budget line this quarter arrives from accounting after month-end — which is well past the moment you could have acted on it.
What changes with Tenderely BPM
01
The request is structured data
What, how much, which budget line, needed by when. Because the fields are defined, requests become comparable and reportable.
02
Approval branches on the amount
Conditional branching and parallel steps are configured, not coded. The limit rule lives inside the flow instead of in a policy document, so nobody has to remember it.
03
A waiting step chases itself
Give a step an SLA and it warns when the deadline passes. Approvals stop sitting quietly in an inbox.
04
Approve from a phone
The same flow runs in the iOS and Android apps, so a manager who is travelling still moves the approval with one tap.
05
Suppliers quote from outside
Send a public form to a supplier as a link and their quote lands on the same record. They do not need an account.
06
Spend is visible now
Committed amounts per budget line, approvals still pending and late deliveries sit on a dashboard instead of waiting for month-end.
FAQ
Can we reproduce our existing approval rules exactly?
+
Yes. Approval chains, branching by amount or category, parallel approval and delegation are all configured without code. If your rule is "two signatures above 100k", the flow enforces exactly that, and it cannot be bypassed without the exception being recorded.
Will it talk to our ERP or accounting system?
+
Yes. There are API keys, outbound webhooks that fire on an event, inbound webhooks that open a record from an external system, a scheduled Google Sheets feed, and Excel/CSV import and export. An approved order can notify your own system automatically.
Can everyone see purchasing data?
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No. Unit-, role- and field-level permissions decide who sees what, and a department can be limited to its own requests. Fields such as price can be hidden from specific roles.