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Spend Control Help

Spend control is an optional account feature which can control what or how much an account user purchases online. It's unavailable to non-account or anonymous customers. Customer administrators can manage aspects of spend control such as its limits and who it applies to but only an Arco administrator can enable the features on request.

When enabled and active, spend control performs an assessment at checkout. On its own, spend control can be applied as:

  • Single order allowance
  • Periodic order allowance
  • Product control allowance
  • Employee allowance

Users can be given permission to approve one or more of these four types and organisations can nominate as many approvers for each type as they wish.

Requisitions will be created whenever a user attempts to purchase a product with "Approval Required" status or exceed a set spend limit or allowance.

Requisitions pending approval can be viewed in the Orders & Requisitions section of My Account or by following a link sent via email to approvers. Approvers can approve all orders by users within their Organisation up to a certain limit for all allowance types for which they are an assigned approver.

If there are multiple approvers for one type, then only one of them needs to approve or reject the requisition.

Setting a Maximum Value Limit

The single order allowance lets an administrator set a limit on the maximum value for a single order. It's managed from the spend control tile in My Account. One or more users can be selected, either from the three dots on the right or via the pop-up menu at the bottom of the page. Administrators can create a new allowance or, where spend control limits already exist, they can change or remove them.

Setting a Periodic Order Allowance

The periodic order allowance works in a similar way by setting a value limit. However, this allowance applies to an account number and its users rather than individual users alone. As the name suggests, the limit is set over a specified period (week, month or year). It's accessed from the spend control tile in My Account, by selecting the Org Units option from the drop-down menu. If the limit of the allowance is breached, a requisition is created instead of an order so that a user with the relevant permissions can review the request before an order is placed.

Setting Product Restrictions

The product control allowance works alongside Product Access Control (PAC) to provide tighter restrictions. When both are enabled, any products which have been flagged as “non-core” by your organisation will need approval. If this occurs, a requisition is created instead of an order so that a user with the relevant permissions can review the request before an order is placed. Product approvers and spend approvers can be the same or different users, as the rights to approve are based on permissions. See the PAC help page for more information.

Setting Employee Allowance

The employee allowance works alongside Wardrobe Management to control spend that's linked to wearer lists. Employees are not web users and exist within the system so that an account user can purchase on behalf of them, to facilitate wearer packing and wardrobe management. For more information, see the Wardrobe Management help page.

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