The University recently undertook a review of our corporate governance and decision-making framework, streamlining the way we make informed decisions.

The review considered our current Scheme of Delegation and following this work, we are making some changes to the Agresso workflow approvals to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our decision-making.

The changes will result in realigning the approvals process to empower staff in their purchasing decision-making at the right level, achieve better management of purchasing spend, remove bottlenecks, and reduce any unnecessary administrative workload creating more time for leaders.

The new Agresso workflow approvals process was agreed with Heads of Finance and ratified with the Senior Management Group in March 2021. The new workflows have been successfully tested with a range of approvers across all Colleges and University Services.

What is changing?

The new approval workflow is illustrated below:

Requisition approvals by value

Value

Approvers

Under £1000

1. Purchasing Officer

 

Between £1000 and £25,000

1. Purchasing Officer

2. Sub-project Approver

 

Between £25,000 and £50,000

1. Purchasing Officer

 

2. Category Manager

3. Sub-project Approver

 

Between £50,000 and £100,000

1. Purchasing Officer

2. Category Manager

3. Sub-project Approver

4. Head of Finance

 

Between £100,000 and £500,000

1. Purchasing Officer

2. Head of Procurement

3. Sub-project Approver

4. Head of School

5. Head of Finance

 

Over £500,000

1. Purchasing Officer

2. Head of Procurement

3. Sub-project Approver

4. Head of School

5. Head of Finance

6. Head of College

7. Director of Finance

Additionally, the Head of Finance to approve expenditure over £10,000 only for College of Arts and College of Social Sciences

The changes are reflected within the University’s Scheme of Delegation.

The specific changes are as follows:

  • The Purchasing Officers will now be the first approver for all purchasing requests, enabling a ‘right first time’ approach and removing the possibility of a second approval loop when requisitions are rejected at the final step.
  • The Purchasing Officer approval limit will increase from £100 to £1000 to allow relatively low levels of spend to be managed more efficiently and without the need for a second approval step.
  • The Procurement Team Category Managers will now become an approver for purchases between £25-100k, and the Head of Procurement will approve all purchase over £100k, ensuring compliance with the University’s Procurement Policy and supporting a seamless flow through further approval steps.
  • The Head of Finance in all Colleges and University Services will be introduced as an approver for all purchases over £50k (over £10k for College of Arts and College of Social Sciences), enabling greater visibility and alignment of spend allocation to budgets and forecast.
  • The Head of Subject will no longer be required to approve purchasing requests, and the Head of College will now only approve purchases over £500k, reducing unnecessary administrative workload.

What do I need to know?

The changes will be effective from Tuesday 23 November 2021. Any requisition approval initiated from this date, will progress via the updated Agresso workflows.

The new workflows have been developed in Agresso and will switch on automatically. Therefore, there is no change in the way you currently use Agresso.

Approval workflows that have been initiated prior to Tuesday 23 November, but are yet to be completed, will continue to follow the current approval workflow: i.e., Purchasing Officers will be the final approver.

Tailored communications will be sent to each Approver group, providing further information on the changes relevant to their role.

Next steps

If you have any queries about the workflow changes, please contact the Procurement team via finance-procurementhelpline@glasgow.ac.uk.

Any support issues relating to Agresso should be logged via the Ivanti helpdesk.

Please continue to refer to the information and resources available via the Procurement webpage.

Thank you for your attention and support in these changes.

Kind Regards,
Jo Gallagher

Head of Procurement

First published: 19 November 2021

<< 15 November 2021