Task and project manager approval is skipped by the system for project based PO

Summary:

Hi

We have a PO approval hierarchy as below for the Project based POs:

Task Manager > Project Manager > approval group (as per the amount)

We observed that if the task Manager or project manager is not setup on the projects the system skips the level and goes to the next level of approval. if there is no next level approver than system rejects the PO.

Is there a way the approval workflow remains at the task manager level (instead skipping the level) until the task manager is assigned to the project. There are chances that task and project managers may not be assigned initially and can be done later by business.