Money & Insight

Purchase Requests Guide

File a farm purchase request, move it through approval and payment, attach the receipt, and keep the matching Finance expense accurate without entering the same purchase twice.

1. Overview and lifecycle

Requests gives the farm one traceable path from “we need to buy this” to a paid, receipted expense. It replaces the separate message, approval, cash handoff, spreadsheet entry, and receipt chase with one record.

Pending

An approver needs to decide. The requester can still edit or delete.

Approved

The amount is approved, but an approver still needs to record payment.

Paid

Payment and a Finance expense exist. The requester or an approver needs to add the receipt.

Closed

The receipt is attached. The request is complete and read-only.

Declined path

An approver can decline a Pending request with a required reason. The result is read-only and appears under the Rejected status tab; the request details say Declined and show the reason.

The accounting boundary: Filing or approving a request does not create an expense. Marking it paid creates the matching expense in Finances.

2. Quick start

1
File it
Open Requests, select New request, enter what is needed, choose a category, enter the amount, and select File request.
2
Wait for a decision
The request stays Pending until a permitted owner, admin, or manager approves or declines it.
3
Record the real payment
From an Approved request, select Mark as paid, choose the method and the date the money was actually paid, then confirm.
4
Add the evidence
Open the Paid request, select Upload receipt to close, choose the receipt, and select Close request.

Use the real payment date: The Payment date becomes the transaction date in Finances. Today is filled in for convenience, but change it when the payment happened earlier. A future payment date is not allowed.

3. File a request

Open Requests for the farm.
Select New request. On a phone, use the round action button near the lower-right corner.
Complete the required fields and any useful optional details.
Select File request, or use Save & add another for repeat entry.

Required fields

What do you need?

Describe the purchase clearly (up to 500 characters).

Amount

Enter a positive amount in the farm’s configured currency.

Optional details

What is it for?: Choose a subcategory. A subcategory can also set its matching parent category, which the form tells you.
Needed by: Choose today or a later date so the approver knows the deadline.
For a project: Choose a Planning or Active project. If it has budget items, you may match one or choose Not in this budget / no matching item.
Tag to a field, herd, or animal: Add supported farm resources and assign their shares. When more than one is selected, allocations must total 100%.
Add a note: Include context that helps the approver decide (up to 1,000 characters).

Category and resource rules

Categories	Resources available
Materials & supplies, Labor, Equipment, Services, Transport, Buildings & structures, Water & site infrastructure, Security & surveillance, Other	Fields, herds, or animals
Livestock	Herds or animals
Seedlings	Fields
Overhead	None; overhead stays general to the farm

Faster repeat entry: Requests remembers the last category used for this farm. Save & add another clears the changing fields while keeping the category and resource context ready for the next request. Changing category clears resource tags when their allowed types may no longer match.

4. Find and filter requests

Use the status tabs to move between Pending, Approved, Paid, Closed, Rejected, and All. Non-zero counts appear on Pending, Approved, and Paid to make the active queues easy to scan.

Everyone / Mine

Approvers can switch between the farm-wide queue and requests they filed. Other farm members see only their own requests.

Your view is remembered

Status and scope are saved in the page address. Refreshing or sharing that address preserves the same view, subject to the recipient’s permissions.

Read and open a card

Each card shows the description, category, requester, age, amount, status, and—on Pending requests—the needed-by date. If approval changed the amount, the card shows the approved amount and the original amount asked. Select anywhere on the card or its Open cue for full details.

The newest requests load first. When older records remain, the page says how many are shown and offers Load older requests. Select it again as needed until the older history has loaded.

Desktop shortcuts: Press N to file a request; J/K or the arrow keys to move; Enter to open; Esc to clear the highlight; and Cmd/Ctrl + K for Requests commands. In request forms, Cmd/Ctrl + Enter confirms the active step.

5. Edit or delete a request

Only the original requester can edit or delete their own request, and only while it remains Pending. Being an owner or approver does not grant the ability to rewrite somebody else’s request.

Edit

Open the request and select Edit. You can change its description, category, subcategory, amount, needed-by date, note, resource allocations, project, and budget item, then select Save changes.

Delete with Undo

Open the Pending request and select Delete. The card disappears immediately and an Undo toast remains available for about seven seconds before deletion is committed.

If the save fails: The edit dialog stays open, your entries remain in place, and Try again resubmits them. Do not close the form unless you intend to abandon those unsaved changes.

6. Approve or decline

Approval rights follow the farm’s expense policy. Farm owners and active organization owners/admins can approve. A farm manager can act only when the policy allows manager approval; the amount being approved or paid must also stay within any manager limit. If it exceeds the limit, the farm owner must act.

Approve

Open a Pending request and select Approve.
Keep the requested amount or enter a different positive approved amount.
Add an optional note, then select Confirm approval.

Decline

Open a Pending request and select Decline.
Enter the required reason so the requester knows what to do next.
Select Decline request.

A safe decision queue: Approval and decline both offer a short Undo window. If another approver already handled the request, FarmSentry does not overwrite that decision; it names the conflict and asks you to refresh for the latest status.

7. Mark an approved request paid

Use this step only after money has actually been paid. Open an Approved request, select Mark as paid, and review the consequence shown before confirming.

Payment method: Cash, Mobile money, Bank transfer, Check, Credit, or Other.

Payment date: Defaults to today. Pick the earlier date on which payment really happened. Future dates are blocked.

Notes: Optionally record a reference, vendor, or other payment detail.

What Confirm payment does

Changes the request from Approved to Paid.
Creates one matching paid expense in Finances for the approved amount.
Uses the selected Payment date as the Finance transaction date.
Copies the category, subcategory, project, budget item, and resource allocations.
Shows an Undo action for a few seconds after success.

Never duplicate the expense: Do not add the same purchase manually in Finances. The matching expense is created automatically only when the request is marked paid.

8. Attach the receipt and close

A Paid request is not finished yet. The original requester or an approver can open it, select Upload receipt to close, choose the file, wait for the saved file name, and select Close request. Attaching the receipt changes the request to Closed and connects the evidence to the matching Finance expense.

Current file rules

One JPEG/JPG, PNG, WebP, or PDF.
Source files over 32 MB are rejected before preparation.
Images are compressed automatically, then must be 4 MB or smaller.
PDFs are not compressed and must be 4 MB or smaller.

After closure

Receipt images preview inside the request.
PDF receipts open in a new tab.
Both can be downloaded; a failed preview offers Retry.
The current UI does not replace or remove a receipt after closure.

Duplicate warning: If the selected file matches an earlier receipt on the farm, FarmSentry warns you. Check the earlier record before closing so the same evidence is not attached by mistake.

A failed close preserves your work: If the receipt uploaded but the close step loses connection, the dialog stays open and the saved receipt remains selected. Select Try again; you do not need to upload the file a second time.

9. Correct a paid request

Expenses created by Requests must stay in sync with the request that created them. Finances labels the row From a request and does not offer normal Edit or Delete actions, because changing only the expense would break the approval trail. Use Open original request to return to the source record.

Open the Paid request before a receipt has been attached.
An approver selects Remove payment record.
The matching expense is removed from Finances and the request returns to Approved.
Mark it paid again with the correct method, date, or notes.

This changes FarmSentry’s records only

Removing the payment record does not reverse cash, a bank transfer, mobile money, credit, or any other real-world payment already made.

Correction window: Remove payment record is available only to an approver while the request is Paid and has no receipt. Once the receipt closes the request, the current UI offers no payment correction or receipt replacement/removal workflow.

10. Projects, resources, and Finances

Project attribution

A request may name a Planning or Active project and an optional budget item. The details remain visible to the approver before payment.

When actual spend begins

Filing and approval do not count as project actuals. Once paid, the created Finance expense carries the project and contributes to its spent amount.

Resource allocation

Field, herd, and animal tags and their percentages carry into the created expense, putting spend against the intended enterprise in reporting.

Project lists are contextual: The project choice appears for open projects, or when editing a Pending request that already has a project link. A budget item is offered only after a project is selected and its current budget items load.

11. Permissions, errors, and common questions

Who can do what?

Action	Who can do it	When
File	Farm member, for themselves	From the farm’s Requests page
Edit or delete	Original requester only	Pending only
Approve or decline	Policy-permitted approver	Pending only
Mark paid	Policy-permitted approver	Approved only
Attach receipt	Original requester or approver	Paid only
Remove payment record	Approver	Paid, with no receipt

Recover from common problems

The list did not load

Use Try again. A temporary connection failure does not mean the saved requests were deleted.

Filing or editing failed

Keep the dialog open. Your typed entries remain there; reconnect and select Try again.

Payment failed

The payment form remains open with the selected method, date, and notes. Try again after the connection returns, or refresh if FarmSentry says somebody else changed the request.

The status is stale

Another approver may have acted first. Refresh request to load the latest status instead of repeating the old action.

Projects did not load

Select Try again. You may still file without a project, but it will not count toward a project budget. If an edited request already has a project, the existing link is preserved unless you change it.

Budget items did not load

Retry the list. You may file the request, but it will not be matched to a budget item.

The farm currency changed

A request in the old currency cannot be paid into books kept in the current farm currency. Decline it and have it refiled in the currency named by the error.

Common questions

Where do I find the expense?: Approvers can use View in Finances while the request is Paid; Closed requests with a linked expense also show it. This opens the farm’s Finances page, where the row is labelled From a request.
Can I return from Finances?: Yes. The expense actions include Open original request. The link opens that request directly, including older requests not yet loaded in the visible queue.
Why can’t I see Everyone?: Everyone is shown only to approvers. Other farm members are restricted to Mine on both the page and the saved records.
Is Requests a separate premium tool?: Purchase Requests does not currently have a separate feature upgrade gate. Access depends on farm membership, role, and the farm’s expense policy.

Good retry guidance: FarmSentry keeps typed entries or an uploaded receipt in the open dialog when the related save fails. Retry from that dialog so you do not repeat work or create a second record.