When building a Decision Automation Workflow in SourceDay, your team can leverage a wide variety of filters to tailor automation to your specific business needs. These filters allow you to define exactly which supplier proposals should trigger a workflow and which should be ignored.
This article explains the meaning of each suggested filter and provides practical examples of how to use them effectively.
Note: These instructions are for Admins or delegates who have Custom Automation edit access.
How do filters work?
When building an automation, you choose which proposals should trigger your rule by adding one or more filters. These filters let you define logic based on:
Proposal fields: Cost, quantity, due date, etc.
Supplier, item, site: Who the supplier is, what’s being ordered, where it’s being delivered
Custom fields: Any additional fields you track on your POs
You can mix and match these filters to reflect real business processes—such as flagging price increases, auto-accepting proposals from trusted suppliers, or only reviewing POs for certain items or sites.
Using "Matches" in the suggested filters
Every supplier proposal in SourceDay always includes cost, quantity, and date—even if only one was changed.
If a supplier proposes a new quantity but not a new cost or date, they’re still affirming the current values for those fields.
This is important for automation:
If you only care about changes to one field, such as quantity, you need to make sure your filters account for the others.
That’s where the “matches” filter comes in.
Example: To only automate when the quantity changes (ignoring cost or date changes), set your filters like:
- Active date proposal (Supplier) matches Date
- Active cost proposal (Supplier) matches Cost
- Active quantity proposal (Supplier) is at most 5% more than Quantity (shows a change)
This ensures your automation is only triggered by quantity changes—not by proposals that also change cost or date.
TIP:
For fields you don’t care about, simply leave them out of your filter if you want to allow any value.
Suggested filters for supplier change proposals
When a custom workflow is triggered by supplier proposals to change a PO line’s date, cost, or quantity, SourceDay will suggest a set of filters. These help you refine your workflow to focus on only the proposals that matter most to your team.
Here are the most commonly used filters:
Active date proposal (supplier)
Definition: The date proposed by the supplier.
Behavior: If the supplier does not propose a new date, this value defaults to the PO’s current collaboration date.
Use case: Use this filter to detect whether the proposed date falls within an acceptable range of the current PO due date.
Active cost proposal (supplier)
Definition: The cost proposed by the supplier.
Behavior: If the cost remains unchanged, this value matches the PO’s current cost.
Use case: Use this filter to catch and act on cost increases or decreases beyond a certain threshold.
Active quantity proposal (supplier)
Definition: The quantity proposed by the supplier.
Behavior: If no quantity change is proposed, this matches the current PO quantity.
Use case: Use this to catch significant changes in order volume from suppliers.
Examples
Example 1: Auto-approve minor date changes
Goal: Take action only when:
The proposed date is within 1 week of the current collaboration date
No changes are made to cost or quantity
Suggested filter setup:
Active date proposal (supplier) → less than or equal to the current collaboration date plus 7 days
Active cost proposal (supplier) → equals Cost
Active quantity proposal (supplier) → equals Quantity
This rule works well for trusted suppliers where minor date shifts are acceptable and don’t require manual review.
Example 2: Review cost increases
Goal: Take action only when:
The supplier proposes a higher cost than the original PO line within parameters
Regardless of any changes to date or quantity
Suggested filter setup:
Active date proposal (supplier) → matches current collaboration date (no date proposals)
- Active quantity proposal (supplier) → matches quantity (no proposed qty changes)
Active cost proposal (supplier) → is less than the cost plus 5%
This setup helps teams automatically identify cost increase proposals for further review or escalation.
Tips for effective filtering
Stage your automation to see which POs would have triggered, and adjust your filters as needed.
Remember “matches”: Use this to filter for “no change” in a field.
For fields you want to ignore, leave them out of your filter list.
All filters are combined using AND logic. (All must be true.)