Rescuing a system the business had outgrown

1. 01

   Budget figures that disagreed

   The old system calculated budgets eight different ways with different answers, so finance had to track budgets in Excel alongside it.

2. 02

   Requests in a black box

   Requesters were never told the outcome, and stuck requests showed a greyed-out button with no explanation.

3. 03

   Unsupported and fragile

   An out-of-support framework, no automated tests, and nobody left who knew how it all fitted together.

A purchase request, end to end

1. 1

   Request

   A requester, or a buyer on their behalf, captures the lines. Each line shows its price against the item's set rate.

2. 2

   Prepare & approve

   Procurement assigns the cost centre and buyer and reviews anything above a value threshold. Approvers then sign in order within the cost centre's price bands; delegates can sign for them, and nobody can approve their own request.

3. 3

   Funds check

   The final signature checks the budget in the same step, so nothing is approved without the money to pay for it.

4. 4

   Post

   Approved purchases post straight to the ERP's requisition worksheet, and the requester is told.

5. 5

   Stay informed

   Every step notifies the people involved. Approvers get reminders and a weekday 07:00 summary, and a blocked request or failed posting raises an alert.

6. 6

   Close the month

   On the last evening, approvals lock. Open requests are carried over or cancelled, the month-end report closes the period, and next month's budgets are pasted in from Excel.

• Audit before code

  We documented the legacy system against a copy of live data: 164 capabilities rated working, defective, unreachable, or dead, and a recommendation to keep, fix, merge, or retire each one, with the open business questions settled with the client.

• One workflow for purchases & travel

  Price-banded approvals per cost centre, delegation, and segregation of duties. On shared trips, each cost centre approves its own share.

• Budget controls

  One calculation replaces eight. Funds are checked at the final signature, every release, transfer, and adjustment needs a second approver, and a cost centre can be frozen so it approves nothing.

• Month start & month end

  Month-start budgets pasted straight from Excel. At month end, approvals lock on the last evening, open requests are explicitly carried over or cancelled, and a month-end report closes the period.

• Notifications & alerts

  30 notification types across inbox, email, and push, with each person choosing how they hear. Approval reminders, a weekday summary, and alerts when a request is blocked or a posting fails.

• Live dashboards

  Budget Health flags cost centres over budget or nearly spent, the Workflow Monitor shows who is holding things up and how long work has waited, and Supplier Insights tracks spend concentration.

• In-depth reporting

  13 Excel reports: outstanding work, approval decisions, exceptions, orders placed, purchase and travel registers, supplier and travel spend, budget versus actual, cost-centre statements, budget changes, approvers, and month end.

• Posted straight to the ERP

  Suppliers and items come from Business Central, currencies are checked against it, and approved purchases post to its requisition worksheet line by line; if a response is lost, it's reconciled before anything is sent again.

• Requesters

  • A short form limited to their own cost centres
  • Copy a previous request instead of starting again
  • The outcome of every step, as it happens

• Buyers & travel desk

  • Requests raised on someone's behalf, properly recorded
  • A list of overdue approvers to chase
  • Several approved trips posted at once

• Approvers

  • One work queue with a quick Decide button
  • Reminders and a weekday summary of what's waiting
  • Signatures that survive minor edits

• Finance

  • Month-start budgets pasted straight from Excel
  • Budget Health and budget-versus-actual, live
  • A month-end lock, carry-over, and month-end report

1. Late 2024

   Take over

   Took over the code from its original developer, stabilised it, and finished and shipped its Business Central integration.

2. 2026

   Audit

   Specified the whole system from its code and live data, settled the open questions with the client, and decided what to keep, fix, merge, or retire.

3. 2026

   Rebuild

   Rebuilt on a modern stack with an in-app user manual, in parallel with the old system.

4. 2026

   Live

   The full history migrated after rehearsed imports, then the business cut over from the old system.

• A specification-first rebuild, grounded in live data and the client's answers to the open business questions.
• Funds checked in the same transaction as the final approval, so two approvals can't overspend a budget at once.
• Explicit handling when approvers change while requests are in flight.
• An append-only workflow history recording who acted, and on whose behalf.
• Security tightened throughout: shared credentials retired, sign-in moved to Active Directory, and permissions enforced on the server, not just hidden in the UI.
• About 300 automated unit, UI, and browser tests, and an in-app user manual with screenshots captured from the real app.

• .NET
• Angular
• PostgreSQL
• Microsoft Dynamics Business Central
• Active Directory
• Firebase
• Docker
• GitHub Actions