Approval Rules

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Overview

As order volume increases, it becomes more time consuming to review each order to determine if it can be shipped immediately or not. The Approval Rules system automates the order review and approval process as orders are imported.  

Approval rules can automatically approve, un-approve, or cancel orders based on the conditions specified in the "rules". It is also possible to change shipping methods or apply an order state, such as On Hold, etc.

A simple Approval Rule is created by selecting a Monsoon Order Manager field, choosing a comparison expression, providing the value to interrogate, and specifying the action the program should take when the conditions are met.

Rule Groups are comprised of multiple simple approval rules which are evaluated as a unit. All of the components must be TRUE before the Rule Group action is applied to the order.

It is possible to enter any number of Approval Rules, however, avoid using conflicting rules, such as one rule to un-approve the order and another to approve the order. When the action of an approval rule is "Do not approve the order," Monsoon Order Manager does not allow a subsequent rule to then "Approve" the order. Once an order meets the criteria to "Do not approve the order," it can only be approved manually.

Credit card transactions can only be processed automatically if an order is approved upon import. If a credit card order does not meet the approval criteria you specify, the credit card is not charged when the order is imported and the order is not approved.

Description of the screen

New

• opens the Add a New Rule screen to define an approval rule

Edit

• select an existing simple approval rule and click this button to make changes to it
• simple rules within a Rule Group cannot be edited, they must be removed and re-added

Delete

• select this to remove the selected, simple approval rule, or rule group, from the system

Directional Arrows

• use these arrows to move an approval rule or rule group up or down in the list
• the order in which the rules are listed affects the order in which they are applied
• be careful not to define rules that check for conditions which may be changed by a previously executed rule

List of Approval Rules

In the image at the top of this topic, there is one Rule Group and three individual Approval Rules defined.

If this data

• displays "Rule Group" or the Monsoon Order Manager field that is interrogated in a simple approval rule
• select to expand the Rule Group and see its components.

Condition

• display the comparison expression, such as Equals, Is Greater Than or Equal, etc.

Using

• determines the scope of the criteria specified in the Value or List column:

• 1. • Exact value entered - the data being tested must equal the value entered to return a result of True

     • Any of list - if the data being tested contains "ANY" of the items in the delimited list, the test will result in True. This is an implied "OR” situation. For example, if you want to use USPS to ship to destinations other than North America, you could set up a rule that says shipping country does not include “CA”, “US”, “MX” and you would specify “Any of List”, so that if the shipping country does not equal any of these entries, the rule will return a true result.

     • All of List - if the data being tested contains "ALL” of the items within the delimited list, the test will result in True. This is an implied "AND” situation. For example, if you wanted to approve all incoming orders that have a shipping method that contains “UPS” and “Day” (UPS Next Day, UPS 2nd Day, UPS 3 Day, etc.), you could set up a rule to say if Shipping Method Includes “UPS,Day” with All of List selected. This would only approve orders having a method containing both values in the shipping method. UPS Ground would be skipped.

Note: All of these choices are not necessarily available for all comparison expressions. Some comparisons do not have any of these options.

Value or List

• displays the specific value or list of values being evaluated by the rule
• multiple values can be entered and should be separated by commas between the items in the list (no spaces)

Action

• indicates the action the program takes when the result of the test is TRUE

Specifics

• this column only contains data depending on the kind of approval rule defined
• for instance, if the rule changes a shipping method or order state, the end result of the action is displayed here (the final shipping method name or order state applied)  

Additional information

Created:

Revised: 6/21/12

Published: 08/19/15