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Purchase Approval Swimlane Diagram Template

Purchase approval across four lanes (requesting department, procurement, finance, general manager): request, quotes, tiered approval by amount, ordering, receiving and payment. Adapt it to your procurement policy and export PNG, Word or PowerPoint for free.

General manager

Finance

Procurement

Requesting department

Yes

No

Approved

Rejected

Raise purchase need

Fill in purchase request

Receive and inspect goods

Collect quotes

Select supplier

Place order

Under 10,000?

Pay supplier

Approve

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When to use it

Procurement policies, internal control documentation and quality-system manuals. The diagram shows tiered approval: purchases under a threshold are cleared by finance, larger ones go to the general manager, and the flow closes with receiving and payment.

Making it yours

  • Change the threshold inside E{Under 10,000?}. Each extra approval level is one more lane and one more diamond.
  • Add steps such as "three quotes required" or "sign contract" inside the Procurement lane and connect them with -->.
  • Double-click a step in the preview to rename it; lane names are edited after subgraph in the code.
  • Pick another theme from the theme strip to match your document; the export background follows the theme.

Mermaid code

flowchart TB
    subgraph Requesting department
        A[Raise purchase need] --> B[Fill in purchase request]
        H[Receive and inspect goods]
    end
    subgraph Procurement
        C[Collect quotes] --> D[Select supplier]
        G[Place order]
    end
    subgraph Finance
        E{Under 10,000?}
        I[Pay supplier]
    end
    subgraph General manager
        F[Approve]
    end
    B --> C
    D --> E
    E -- Yes --> G
    E -- No --> F
    F -- Approved --> G
    F -- Rejected --> A
    G --> H
    H --> I

Ask an AI for one with this structure

Send the prompt below to ChatGPT or Claude, then paste the whole reply into the editor; the code inside is detected automatically.

Draw a purchase approval swimlane diagram in Mermaid flowchart syntax with subgraph lanes for Requesting department, Procurement, Finance and General manager. The requesting department raises the need and fills in a purchase request; procurement collects quotes and selects a supplier; purchases under 10,000 are approved by finance, larger ones by the general manager; procurement then places the order, the requesting department receives and inspects the goods, and finance pays. Output only the mermaid code block.

FAQ

Can I change the order of the lanes?

Yes. The order in which the subgraph blocks appear in the code decides their rough placement; cut and paste a whole block to move it. The layout engine then adjusts positions based on the connections.

Can a decision node have two lines of text?

Yes, insert <br/> in the label, for example E{Amount<br/>under 10,000?}. If the diagram gets too wide, change TB to LR on the first line.

Can I edit the exported file?

The Word and PowerPoint files contain an image, which cannot be edited in Office. The Mermaid code is appended at the end of the file, so copy it back into the editor, change it and export again.

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Updated 2026-09-05