Where purchase requisitions quietly bypass approval
Temporary routing rules left after peak season often survive into ordinary buying weeks — and auditors see them first in the application, not the policy binder.
Peak buying weeks tempt organisations to shorten approval chains. A temporary route is created so a plant manager can release orders when the usual director is travelling. The policy binder still shows the longer path. The application remembers the shorter one.
During audits we ask for the active routing table, not the laminated chart in the corridor. We then sample purchase orders from the quiet month after the peak. If releases still follow the temporary route, the finding writes itself: the application never restored the intended chain.
What to check before an audit arrives
- Expiry dates on temporary approval routes
- Whether backup approvers inherit the same monetary limits
- Logs that show who disabled a secondary approval step
Fixing the route is usually a configuration change. Finding it early is a habit: compare the application’s live path with the path your finance committee believes exists.