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sourceDocument: Brazil Finance and Supply Chain
sourceDocumentLink: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/source-to-pay-operations

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    - brazil

ft:locale :

    - en-US

ft:publication_title :

    - Brazil Finance and Supply Chain

ft:clusterId :

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workflow :

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---

# Approval rule types

# Approval rule types {#ariaid-title1}

Release version: Brazil  
Updated September 10, 2026  
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## Summary of Approval rule types

Approval rule types in ServiceNow define how approvals are created during the purchase requisition process, enabling procurement administrators to configure approval strategies that ensure internal validation before converting requisitions into purchase orders.
This centralized configuration supports various organizational approval workflows by determining the conditions for generating and routing approval plans.
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## Approval Rule Types and Their Use Cases

* **Dynamic Users or Groups:** Approvals are dynamically assigned based on purchasing user attributes, such as cost center managers. Approvals are routed in parallel, ideal for scenarios where approvals depend on user-specific organizational data.
* **Managerial Job Code Hierarchy:** Approvals are driven by job codes within a management hierarchy and can be routed sequentially or in parallel. This supports approval limits based on job roles, allowing either all approvers or any approver within the hierarchy to approve.
* **Managerial Hierarchy:** Approvals are based on the purchasing user's managerial chain, with flexible routing (parallel or sequential) and decision methods (all or any approver). This caters to requirements like approvals from direct managers, all managers, or the most senior manager up to a specified job code.
* **Specified Users or Groups:** Approvals are triggered for explicitly designated users or groups with parallel routing, useful for fixed approval responsibilities regardless of organizational structure.
* **Cost Center Managers:** Designed for purchase requisitions with costs allocated across multiple cost centers, requiring parallel approvals from each relevant cost center manager. Approvals can be partial or complete per item or line, with notifications sent via email and options to approve through various ServiceNow interfaces including email, Shopping Hub, Employee Center, Virtual Agent, or mobile.
* **Self-approved Purchases:** Requesters with appropriate purchasing authority or job code can have their purchases automatically approved without creating approval tasks, while maintaining an audit trail. Administrators can control whether the requester must explicitly approve by setting the "Allow automatic approval" flag in the Approval Rules form, thereby overriding default self-approval behavior when needed.

## Practical Considerations

ServiceNow customers should ensure that the "Allow automatic approval" flag is correctly set to reflect their organizational approval policies. Misconfiguration may lead to approvals not being generated as expected. Understanding these rule types helps tailor approval processes to organizational needs, improving compliance and efficiency in procurement workflows.  
Approval rule types determine the methods by which approvals are created during the
purchase requisition process.
As a procurement administrator, you can define an approval strategy and create approval rules to approve a purchase internally before it's converted to a purchase order and sent to a supplier. This is a one-place configuration
that can drive any kind of approval process that your organization may need.  
You can create these approval rule types that go on to determine the conditions under which approval plans are generated and routed:{#approval-rule-types__table_rxr_hcz_flb__entry__3}

| Approval rule type | Description | Example Scenario |
|-|-|-|
| Dynamic Users or Groups | Approvals are dynamically created and sent to the specified user or group. Approvals are triggered based on the purchasing user's attributes. The approval routing method is restricted to just sending approvals in parallel. | If approval is required from the purchasing user's cost center manager, then at the time when the purchase requisition is sent to pending approval, the rule looks at the record for the user in the Business Owner field, dot-walks to the referenced cost center, and sends an approval to whoever is the referenced user in the Manager field on the cost center. |
| Managerial Job Code Hierarchy | Approvals are triggered based on the purchasing user's job code and manager's job code. The approval routing method can be parallel or sequential, and the approval decision method can be all approvers or any approver. | If approval is required from all users up to the user with an authorized code, then an approval is sent to all users within a management hierarchy up to the user with an authorized job code for the approved purchasing limit that covers the total amount of the purchase requisition. If approval is required from the most junior user with an authorized code, then an approval is sent to the most junior user within a management hierarchy up to the user with an authorized job code for the approved purchasing limit that covers the total amount of the purchase requisition. |
| Managerial Hierarchy | Approvals are triggered based on the purchasing user's manager's hierarchy. The approval routing method can be parallel or sequential, and the approval decision method can be all approvers or any approver. | If approval is required from all managers in hierarchy, then an approval is sent to all users in the purchasing user's (business owner) management hierarchy up to the job code specified, when the approval trigger conditions are met. If approval is required from the direct manager alone, then an approval is sent to the user's manager in the purchasing user's (business owner) management hierarchy. If approval is required from the most senior manager, then an approval is sent to the most senior manager in the purchasing user's (business owner) management hierarchy up to the job code specified. |
| Specified Users or Groups | Approvals are triggered based on the specified users or groups. The approval routing method is restricted to just sending approvals in parallel. |   |
| Cost Center Managers | Approvals are triggered only for purchase requisitions, from multiple cost center managers.​ The approval routing method is restricted to just sending approvals in parallel. | If the cost of a purchase requisition is allocated across many cost centers, approvals are sent to each cost center manager for the cost allocation amount needing approval. If an individual item in the purchase requisition has cost allocated across multiple cost centers, all the cost center managers must provide their approval for the amount of that item to be approved.​ The purchase requisition can be partially or completely approved depending on the approval decision for each individual item or purchase line. Cost center managers receive email notifications for their approval with details of the purchase and the allocated amount needing approval. They can provide their approval directly from the email, or​ complete their approval in Shopping Hub, Employee Center, Virtual Agent, or Shopping Hub Mobile. |
[Table 1. Approval rule types]

{#approval-rule-types__table_rxr_hcz_flb}

## Self-approved purchases {#approval-rule-types__section_qhl_jjs_h5b}

For requesters who possess the right purchasing authority, job code, or belong to designations that meet a defined purchasing approval matrix, their purchases are self-approved. An audit trail is made available, where an
approval plan is created with the approval type as Self Approved, and in the Closed Complete state, though no actual approval tasks are created.  
Such requesters can also complete approval tasks, if configured, and provide approvals for invoices from suppliers to be routed for payment. In the Approval Rules form, an admin can configure the need for a requester to provide an explicit approval decision, through the Allow automatic approval flag. By default, this flag is checked or set to true, enabling the self-approval functionality, where the requester has the approving authority. However, if the flag is cleared or set to false, the requester is included to be an active approver in the approval engine's generated approval list, thus overriding the default self-approval functionality. The requester now must provide an explicit approval decision by completing an approval task.  
Note:  
In case of any issues related to approvals not getting created as expected, ensure that the flag on the rule is in the correct state and the rule conditions are met.