Two-person approval for high-value industrial orders

The situation

An engineering supplier handles a mix of small repeat orders and occasional large orders for project work, some running into tens of thousands of pounds. The finance director wants every large order checked by two people before it’s committed, and wants a record of who checked what.

At the moment, the second check happens by forwarding emails around, and there’s no reliable record of whether it happened.

What we’d build

• Order capture and review, with orders created in Sage once approved.
• Buddy checking. Orders over a set value need two different people. The first reviews the order as normal and marks it Checked. It then waits for a second person to review and Approve. The same person can’t do both, and both names are recorded in the audit log. The threshold can be changed, or applied to every order.
• Email alerts. Team members choose which alerts they receive: a new order waiting for review, an order waiting for its second check, or a failed carrier booking.
• A full audit log, recording every approval, edit and removal with a name and time.

How an order flows

1. A large order arrives as a PDF with 60 lines.
2. It’s extracted and checked. Three lines are low confidence because the PDF is a scan, so they’re flagged.
3. A member of the sales office corrects the three lines against the PDF and marks the order as checked.
4. The operations manager gets an email alert, reviews the order and approves it.
5. The order is created in Sage. The audit log shows who checked it, who approved it and which fields were changed.

What changes day to day

• The second check happens inside the system, so it can’t be skipped or forgotten.
• There’s a clear record for any order, which matters when a customer disputes a quantity months later.
• Smaller orders under the threshold flow through with a single review, so the extra control doesn’t slow down routine work.

Typical scope

The Order automation package with the buddy checking and email alerts add-ons. Warehouse and shipping can follow if wanted. See pricing.