Purchasing · Daily operations · 8 min read

Raise and approve a purchase requisition

Ask internally to buy something, get it approved by someone else, and turn it into a request for quotation, or shop a supplier's online catalogue.

Required permission: purchase.requisition.create, purchase.requisition.approve

Before you begin

You need purchase.requisition.create to raise and submit a requisition, and purchase.requisition.approve to approve or return one.
The Purchase requisitions feature switch must be on.
If the company uses budgets, the expense accounts of the requisition are checked at submit and at approval.

Open Purchase > Orders > Purchase requisitions and press New.
Enter Purpose (up to 500 characters) and Needed by. The default is today plus 14 days.
Enter Department (code) if the company shows the field. If it is set to Required, a department that is active on the needed-by date must be chosen.
In Lines, pick a Product. The description, unit and Estimated price (the product cost) fill in. A line with neither product nor description is dropped on save.
Enter the Quantity (above zero) and adjust the Estimated price if needed. The requisition Estimate is the sum of quantity times price.
Optionally pick a Suggested supplier.
Press Save. The requisition is a Draft with a number.
Press Submit.

A different person with the approval right opens the requisition and presses Approve. Nobody approves their own requisition.
To send it back, press Return, type Why it goes back and confirm. The requester edits it (it becomes a draft again on save) and submits again.

The buyer opens Purchase > Orders > Requisitions to order. The queue lists approved lines not yet on an order.
Tick the lines to order, choose the Supplier, and press Create RFQ (n).
A draft RFQ opens. Lines for the same product at the same estimated price are consolidated into one line.

Open Purchase > Orders > Shop a catalogue and press Shop <catalogue name>. A new window opens the supplier's web shop.
Fill the cart in the shop and send it back. The cart appears in the list as Cart received.
Open the cart. Each line shows whether it matched one of your products, through the supplier's code or your own code.
Enter Needed by, optionally a Purpose, and press Make a requisition. You land on Purchase requisitions with a draft requisition, one line per cart line.

Submitted: status Waiting for approval. If a blocking budget would be broken the status is Held by budget; the requisition cannot be approved, only returned.
Approved: a budget commitment is recorded for the estimate. The lines appear in Requisitions to order.
After Create RFQ the requisition shows Ordered and links to the RFQ. Confirming the last order it fed releases the budget commitment.

Only the requester edits a requisition, and only while it is a draft or returned. Otherwise: 'Only the requester edits their requisition.' or 'Only a draft or returned requisition can be edited.'
A past Needed by date can be saved but not submitted: 'The date it is needed by has passed.'
Approval repeats the budget check. If the budget was used up meanwhile, approval is refused and the requisition becomes Held by budget.
Cancel a requisition that is not yet on an order with Cancel; the commitment is released. If part is already on an order: 'Part of this requisition is already on an order; cancel those lines on the order instead.'
A line without a product cannot be turned into an RFQ from the queue: '<description> has no product. Choose the product to order it as.' The queue offers no product picker, so give the line a product on the requisition first.
A requisition for a project needs an expense account on every line, and the screen has no account column. Ask the administrator to raise those through the API.
A cart can become a requisition only once. A shop session older than two hours is expired; open the catalogue again.
Punch-out catalogues are set up by an administrator under Purchase > Configuration > Punch-out catalogues (shop address must start with https://).

Updated 3 October 2026