Configure Purchase settings: approvals, locking and reminders

4 min read Updated 2026-08-30 WindoorERP 19.0

What this does

Purchase settings decide who can commit the company's money and how orders behave after confirmation: approval above a threshold, automatic locking, vendor warnings, and the receipt reminder. The screen is under Purchase › Configuration › Settings, visible to administrators.

Before you start

Settings apply per company; the approval amount in particular is a per-company value.
Two toggles on this page are module installers, not switches — see the table.

Steps

The Purchase settings: order approval, lock confirmed orders, warnings, purchase agreements, receipt reminder, variants and units

01
Open Purchase › Configuration › Settings.
02
Decide the approval rule: Purchase Order Approval with its Minimum Amount makes orders above the amount wait for a Purchase administrator.
03
Decide the after-confirmation rule: Lock Confirmed Orders freezes every confirmed order read-only.
04
Keep Receipt Reminder on and let the daily job chase unconfirmed vendors before the arrival date.
05
Save — and test the approval rule as a normal buyer, not as yourself, for the reason below.

Every setting on the page

Setting	What it really does
Purchase Order Approval + Minimum Amount	Two-step confirmation: a buyer confirming above the amount lands in To Approve; a Purchase administrator releases it. The default amount is 5,000 — and administrators themselves bypass the rule entirely: their confirmations never wait.
Lock Confirmed Orders	Every confirmation locks the order; only an administrator can Unlock. With this off there is no Lock button anywhere — manual locking is not offered.
Warnings	Enables per-product and per-vendor purchase warnings (and blocking messages). Off by default — the warning fields on products and vendors are invisible until this is on.
Purchase Agreements	An installer for the blanket-orders module, which is not installed on WindoorERP — ticking it would install new software. Leave it to a deliberate decision, not a casual save.
Receipt Reminder	On. A daily job emails vendors of confirmed, unacknowledged orders shortly before the expected arrival; the days-before default is 1 and can be tuned per vendor and per order, where a ✉ button sends yourself a preview.
Bill control	There is no bill-control switch on this page, and the 3-way-matching module is not installed. The working control on WindoorERP is each product's Control Policy — goods bill on received quantities by default, which is the protection that matters.
Variants / Variant Grid Entry	Variants are on; the grid-entry matrix is a not-installed module.
Units of Measure & Packagings	On; the link opens the single Units & Packagings screen used across the system.
Dropshipping / Replenish on Order (MTO)	Dropshipping is a not-installed module; the MTO toggle activates the Replenish-on-Order route for make-to-order purchasing.

Note

Days to Purchase — the buffer for how long confirming an RFQ takes — is not on this page: it lives in Inventory › Configuration › Settings › Advanced Scheduling, next to the other scheduling buffers.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause and fix
Approval "does not trigger"	The tester is a Purchase administrator — administrators bypass the threshold. Test with a plain Purchase user above the Minimum Amount.
No Lock button on confirmed orders	By design: the button exists only while Lock Confirmed Orders is on, and then locking happens automatically anyway.
Warning fields nowhere to be found on products or vendors	The Warnings setting is off; the fields are hidden with it.
Settings menu missing for a purchase manager	The menu entry itself is administrator-level; the manager sees the rest of Configuration.

Common mistakes

Believing approval covers everyone — the administrator bypass means the rule guards buyers, not managers.
Ticking installer toggles (Purchase Agreements, Variant Grid Entry, Dropshipping) casually — each installs a module on save.
Looking for a bill-control setting here: billing control moved to the product's Control Policy.

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