Power Automate Multi Level Approval on Dollar Value

[Olijk]

Hello,

I am in the process of trying to build out robust flow with multiple approvals based on dollar amount. Is this possible? The steps would be

requestor would submit a Sharepoint form, if the form is over $1k, it would need one approver, if the form is over $10k, it would need 2 approvals and so forth. Notifications would need to be sent back to the submitter once the flow is completed. Is this possible? Could someone help get me started?  It will 8 conditions.  I tried with the When item is created and then start and wait and then added a condition.  

[Rhiassuring]

Hi there, 

There are so many questions you'll want to identify before really solutioning this. Do you want the approvals to go one at a time? Ie, 1k Bob approves, then 10k Sally approves, then 100k Geralt approves, etc? Or do you want it to go to Bob, Sally, and Geralt, all at the same time, all requiring approval, if the total is 120k? What happens if one rejects? 

For either case, you're going to want to create a SharePoint list. Your list will be the reference for the invoice limits. It should include the dollar value and the required approvers. 

Approver | DollarValue

Bob | 1,000

Sally | 10,000

Geralt | 100,000

When your workflow runs, the first thing you'll do is filter the DollarValue column for items less than your submitter's form value. DollarValue lt 'DollarValue'

The great thing about this is that it also brings it back to us in order of ID, so as long as you've entered your people in order of their increasing value approval limit, it'll be in the right order.

So now, we create our "Start & Wait for an Approval", and then put the "Approver Email" into the "Approver" field. (Mine says AssignedTo email because it's a demo.) 

This means it will go through each person, individually, in order, up to the approval limit and request approval. 

If you want it to end if one person rejects it, you can do this: 

But... from experience... usually these "simple" flows end up getting complicated. It's typical your approvers will want to ask questions of the submitter and have a back & forth of comments. Or they might want to get all the comments from the previous approver. Or they might want to be able to restart the flow at where ever it ended before. 

But, this should get you started.

[Olijk]

Hello,

Great! Thank you so much for the information. Yes, I would need approvals one at a time with anything over 10k. So for example, if the amount is $10,500, then the manager would have to approve before the second level of approvers. If it is over $50k, then the manger has to approve, then the 2nd level manger must approve then the third manager must approve. There are 8 levels of approval based on the dollar amount

Up to 10k

>10k to 50k

>50k to 100k

>100k to >500k and so forth…

if one rejects, I would like to have an option for the user to resubmit and an email sent back to the user for the reason for the rejection.

Would I have 2 Sharepoint list, one for where the user enters the information and the other for where the dollar value resides? If so, would it look like this

Approver | DollarValue

Sally | up to 10,000

Bill | 10001-50000

Geralt or Sue | 50001-100,000

[Rhiassuring · Accepted solution]

Yes, that's right - you'd want one list where you store your rules (10,000k+ goes to Sally), and the second list where users actually submit their forms with the actual submitted values. You'd lock down list one so that it can be viewed but never modified except by administrators or other knowledgeable folks.

For the rejection, you'd just want a condition that evaluates "if this is a rejection (the outcome from the Approval), send an email with the comments. If not, don't."

Were you able to get the first part of the flow working?

[Olijk]

Hello,

Apologies for the delay. Thank you for responding. How do you lock down a specific list?

[Rhiassuring]

With permissions. Are you familiar with SharePoint permissions?