PECOS P2P provides a number of configuration options to ensure that an approver does not approve their own requisitions and order requests when they are themselves the owners of an approval step. 

• For bypassing approval, based on a requisitioner's approval or managerial grade, the user profile Bypass Approval Level is used and approval plans configured appropriately. (This requires a degree of configuration for multiple approval steps and does not provide a means of directing approval to an alternate or delegated approver.)
• For directing approval to an alternative approver when the document owner is the owner of an approval step, additional ARG's must be created which must be assigned to all approvers. (This also requires additional configuration and does not work for approval routing based on financial tracking segment value.)

The Approval tab in Organisation Settings allows an Allow self approval permission to be independently configured. If the permission is set to 'No' then the owner of any document will not be allowed to approve their own documents:
a) Approval emails will be suppressed.
b) Approval documents will not be routed to the task owners To Do list.

At the L2 there are radio buttons with two options: 

• 'Yes' (default)
• 'No'

At the L3 and below there are three options:

• 'Default from parent organisation' (default)
• 'Yes'
• 'No

The owner of each document type is defined as:
a) For Requisitions, Order Requests and Change Orders = the Buy For User or Requisitioner
b) For Receipts = the Receiver
c) For Invoices = the Invoicer

Approval routing will SUCCEED when one or more approver who is not the document owner is available to receive the approval object:

• When the Owner Type = 'User' and the assigned User is not the document owner.
• When the Owner Type = 'Role' and the role is one of the system defined roles and the user assigned to the Role is not the document owner.
• When the Owner Type = 'Role' and the role is not a system defined role and there is one or more user assigned to the role in the user's ARG in addition to or different to the document owner. Note that if the approval requirement is 'Required by all' and only one other approver remains available this is deemed acceptable (i.e. one approver is sufficient).

Approval routing will FAIL when the only approver available to receive the approval object is the document owner:

• When the Owner Type = 'User' and the assigned User is the document owner.
• When the Owner Type = 'Role' and the role is one of the system defined roles and the user assigned to the Role is the document owner.
• When the Owner Type = 'Role' and the role is not a system defined role and the only user assigned to the role in the user's ARG is the document owner.
  When approval routing fails, the Default Workflow Approver defined in Message Management will receive the approval document and the Approver Notification eMail message.