What is Business Rule?

Business rules guide the everyday decision-making within businesses by outlining the relationships between objects, such as customer names and their corresponding orders.

Business rules provide the foundation for automation systems by taking documented or undocumented information and translating it into various conditional statements. For example, when conducting a purchase order, there may be a different approval process depending on the cost. Tools and services that are under five thousand USD may only need manager approval, but as costs get higher, they may require approval by the C-suite. Business rules formalize this process by setting thresholds under which invoices are sent to upper management vs. first line managers. Conditional statements, such as these, are applied across a number of business processes.