Managing Approvals in Expenses

This chapter provides overviews of approvals in Expenses, approver types, and approval rules, and discusses how to:

• Use summary approvals for expense transactions.

• Approve expense reports.

• Approve time reports.

• Approve time adjustments.

• Approve travel authorizations.

• Approve cash advances.

• View approval errors.

• Modify approved transactions.

• Manage workflow.

Understanding Approvals in Expenses

Many organizations enforce rules and policies related to expenses that employees and contractors incur for which they seek reimbursement. To manage these rules and policies, organizations can require one or more approvals for expense transactions as a normal part of the business process. The expense transaction types supported for approvals in Expenses are travel authorizations, cash advances, expense reports, time reports, and time adjustments. You can activate all or some of the transaction types for approval through the approval configuration pages.

Organizations can have one or more types of approvers ranging from a departmental reviewer to an auditor who reviews expense transactions after reimbursements are processed. The approval process in Expenses can involve certain actions that an approver can perform such as Approve, Deny, Send Back, or Hold. The actions that an approver can take are determined through set up and configuration of the approver. Reviewing and approving expense transactions are performed through a set of pages that are entered through the Summary Approvals pages, worklist, or email notification. These are a centralized set of pages used by approvers and auditors. Expenses enables reviewers, approvers, and auditors to drill down to the transaction detail where they can view, modify, or take action on the transaction.

Summary Approvals

The Expenses approval functionality enables reviewers, approvers, and auditors to review and approve multiple expense transactions with one approval action. You control the approver actions that can be used on the summary approval pages. You can disable summary approvals if it violates company policy for expense approvals and disable transactions for approval on the summary approval pages if they have exceptions. You can also configure approvals so that an approver with multiple roles can see the same transaction only once. Depending on how you set up Expenses, reviewers, approvers, and auditors can:

• Approve some or all expense transactions in their queue with one action.

• Approve all expense transaction types on one page or approve by transaction type.

• Drill down to view additional information and take action on transactions at the detail level.

• Change the sort order of transactions and view them sequentially in the new order.

• Search for transactions in a pending approval status.

• View expense history for one or more employees prior to approval.

Pooled Approvers

You establish pooled approvers by assigning multiple approvers to the same routing range of ChartFields or by adding multiple profiles to the approver list. In both cases, you must select the Notify All Approvers check box in the Submission Notifications group box on the Approver Routing List page. The system defaults to require only one approver out of the pool to approve a transaction. You can modify this to reflect the number of approvers your organization requires by changing the Number of Approvers Needed value on the Approval Step Definition - Step page.

The following rules apply to pooled approver functionality:

• If you configure the system to require only one approver from a pool of approvers, and one of the approvers performs an approval action, the system withdraws the transaction from the other approvers' queues.

• If you establish multiple profiles on the approver list with multiple approvers assigned to each profile, the system only requires one approval from the pool if you set the Number of Approvers Needed field to 1.

• If you define a profile on an approver list that is associated with a refinement or filter that excludes a transaction, the system excludes from the pool the approvers assigned to that profile. For example, Auditor1, Auditor2, and Auditor3 profiles are on the prepayment auditor approver list. Auditor2 uses a refinement that selects only expense reports that contain project-related expenses. When an employee submits an expense report that does not contain project-related expenses, the approver pool consists of approvers assigned to the Auditor1 and Auditor3 profiles.

• If the system excludes all approvers in a pool because of refinements associated with their profiles, the system automatically approves the transaction for that role.

• If all approvers on an approver list are defined with amount-based rules that exclude a submitted transaction, the system routes the transaction to the employee's supervisor. If the supervisor has already approved the transaction, the system routes the transaction to the next approval stage. If it is the last stage for approving an expense report or cash advance for payment, the system sets the status to Approved for Payment.

Understanding Approver Types

An approver type is a role, and Expenses delivers these approver types:

• Reviewer

  A department reviewer may screen expense transactions for policy compliance prior to the approval process. If you use this type of role, approvals will not be processed until the transaction has been reviewed.

• Expense Manager

  A department or expenses manager is authorized to approve some or all expense transactions. You can use the Expense Manager role instead of using a HR Supervisor or you can use the role in conjunction with the HR Supervisor for approvals of transactions meeting defined conditions, such as report total amount. You define these approvers through an approver list.

• HR Supervisor

  This role is the supervisor to whom the employee, contractor, or consultant directly reports to, and is defined in the employee's user profile.

• Project Manager

  The person designated for project time and expense approvals may be the project manager as defined in Project Costing, or the supervisor as an option in the product.

• Project Supplemental Approver

  A supplemental or conditional approver for project-related expense transactions. Use this approver type instead of project manager approvals, or in conjunction with project manager approvals for project-related transactions that meet defined conditions, such as report total amount or reports with billable project hours. You define these approvers through an approver list.

• Prepayment Auditor

  This approver type supports an auditor process prior to payment processing for review and approvals.

• Post Payment Auditor

  Post payment auditors may take action on expense transactions that have completed the processing cycle. Certain combinations of transactions and approval actions are disallowed for this role.

See Also

Defining Approver Types for Expenses

Understanding Approval Rules

In general, employees cannot approve or audit their own expense transactions. Expenses compares the employee ID on the transaction with the employee ID that is associated with the user ID of the approver or auditor. This section also discusses:

• Deny and undeny rules.

• Final approval rules.

• Privilege rules.

• Routing rules.

• Reassigning rules.

• Approval constraints.

• Final approval status rules.

Deny and Undeny Rules

Expenses uses these rules for deny and undeny functionality:

• When an approver who is authorized to approve all transaction lines in an expense report clicks the Deny button for a transaction, Expenses sets the transaction status to Denied. The transaction cannot be modified or resubmitted. If there are multiple approvers, Expenses does not route the transaction to any subsequent approvers.

  For example, MGR1, MGR2, and MGR3 are required to approve expense reports. If MGR1 denies the expense report, Expenses does not route the report the MGR2 or MGR3.

• When an approver, who is authorized to approve some transaction lines, clicks the Deny button, Expenses denies at the line level. The transaction is eligible for routing to subsequent approvers, if applicable.

• When approvals are performed by a pool of approvers, the first approver who denies the transaction and is authorized to approve all of the transaction lines will set the transaction status to Denied. The system removes the transaction from the approval pool.

• An approver can undeny a line that a previous approver denied, providing that they are authorized to access the line for approval.

Final Approval Rules

Expenses uses these rules for final approvals:

• You must authorize at least one active approver type to approve expense report transactions for payment.

• You must authorize active approver types for expense report transactions to either approve for payment, approve for billing, or both.

• Expenses sets the status for travel authorizations, cash advances, time reports, and time adjustments to Approvals In Process until the final approver approves the transaction.

• Expense reports display a status of Approvals In Process until the final approver who is authorized to approve for payment has approved the transaction. Upon final approval, Expenses changes the status to Approved for Payment. If no reimbursement is due back to the employee, Expenses sets the status to Paid.

• If a transaction is in the Staged or Paid status, Expenses does not enable the Deny or Send Back actions for subsequent approvers and the transaction displays a Pending Billing Approval status. The exception to this rule is that a post payment auditor can deny lines on an expense report or deny the entire transaction.

Privilege Rules

Expenses uses these rules for privileges:

• If there are multiple approvers and one of the approvers adds a new line to an expense transaction, Expenses automatically sets the line to Approved for Payment. Subsequent approvers cannot deny the line. Use the Modify Approved Transactions page to modify or remove the line.

• If an approver adds a line or modifies a line to change the value of a routing ChartField in any distribution, Expenses does not route the transaction back to the beginning of the approval process; only subsequent approvers will see the line.

Routing Rules

Expenses uses these rules for routing:

• The general defaulting rule used in rerouting (escalation), delegation, or reassignment functionality is:

  • If the system cannot determine the appropriate approver based on the configuration, the system routes the transaction to the HR supervisor or designated approver in the employee's profile.

  • If the system cannot determine an HR supervisor or designated approver through the employee's profile, the system routes the transaction to the Expense System Administrator that you define in the transaction definition.

• If the escalation process picks up a transaction for rerouting, and the approver who is designated as the target for rerouting is the same person as the employee or submitter, the system routes the transaction to the approver's supervisor.

• If the rerouting process picks up a transaction for rerouting, and the approver who is designated as the target for rerouting is the same person as the employee or submitter, the system routes the transaction to them but does not enable them to take any transaction approval action on the approval pages.

• If you reassign a transaction to an approver who has already approved the transaction, the system will not route the transaction to that approver again.

Reassigning Rules

When you use the Define Security - Reassign Work page to reassign work from one approver to another, Expenses validates user IDs and transactions:

• Expenses generates an error and terminates the reassign operation if you enter the same approver in the Reassign Work To field on the Define Security - Reassign Work page.

  Example: MGR1 cannot reassign work to MGR1.

• If the originator of an expense transaction is the same as the reassigned approver, Expenses performs the reassignment but when the new approver attempts to perform an approval action, they receive a message indicating that they are not authorized to approve a transaction that they submitted.

  Example: MGR1 reassigns the work to MGR2. Expenses encounters an expense transaction that MGR2 created and submitted to MGR1 for approval.

• If the alternate approver is the same person as the approver whose work is being reassigned, the system reassigns the work as follows:

  Example: MGR1 assigns the work to MGR2. MGR1 is also the alternate approver for MGR2. The system ignores the delegation and reassigns the work to MGR2.

• If an approver reassigns work to another approver who has designated an alternate approver, who in turn has designated an alternate approver who is the original approver, it is considered a circular reference and the reassignment stops at the first approver it encounters who is not the originator.

  Example:

  • MGR1 designates MGR2 as the alternate approver.

  • MGR2 designates MGR3 as the alternate approver.

  • MGR3 designates MGR4 as the alternate approver.

  • MGR4 designates MGR1 as the alternate approver.

  The approval engine loops through the delegated approvers until it can find no more alternates or until an alternate appears who has already appeared once in the approval chain of alternates. In the example above, the system would route the transaction to MGR4 and stop there because the alternate is an approver who has already been processed in the loop.

Approval Constraints

Expenses has some approval constraints:

• The system routes time reports and time report adjustments containing only non-project hours to the HR supervisor or designated approver that you defined on the employee profile.

• You cannot route cash advances to project manager or project supplemental approvers.

Final Approval Status Rules

Expenses uses these rules for final approvals:

• For travel authorizations, cash advances, time reports, and time adjustments, all active approvers must approve before the system marks the transaction header with a final approval status. Final approval status is Approved for these transactions.

• For expense reports, Expenses sets the transaction header status to Approved for Payment upon approval by the last active approver type who is authorized to approve for payment. If subsequent approvers are active, the system routes the transaction to them; however, the expense report is eligible for payment processing, regardless of any subsequent approver actions. If the expense report is in Approved for Payment status, subsequent approvers can deny it or send it back for revision during the prepayment approval process. However, subsequent approvers cannot deny or send back for revision if the expense report has been staged for payment or paid.

• For expense reports, the system sets the billing status to Approved for Billing upon approval by the last active approver type who is authorized to approve for billing. If subsequent approvers are active, the system routes the transaction to them.

• For expense reports, a transaction status of Approved for Payment and project manager flag value of N sets the expense report to be eligible for staging to Project Costing.

Using Summary Approvals for Expense Transactions

This section provides an overview of summary approvals and discusses how to:

• Use summary approvals for all transactions.

• Use summary approvals for expense reports.

• Use summary approvals for time reports.

• Use summary approvals for time adjustments.

• Use summary approvals for travel authorizations.

• Use summary approvals for cash advances.

Understanding Summary Approvals

Expenses delivers a configuration design that enables you to configure an approver for any type of role, whether they are line managers or auditors. All approvers and auditors perform reviews and approval actions through the same approval pages. In some organizations, approvers can view and approve many transactions each day. Expenses enables reviewers, approvers, and auditors to view and approve some or multiple transactions in their queue with one action.

The Approve Transactions pages consist of a summary page of all transactions in an approver's queue and separate pages for each transaction type. On the Summary Approval Options page, you enable or disable the ability for approvers to act on multiple transactions on the Approve Transaction pages. For example, Expenses does not display the Approve, Reviewed, Send Back, Hold, or Budget Check buttons on the Approve Transaction - Overview page if you cleared the Overview and Error Pages check box on the Summary Approval Options page. In this case, Expenses displays the Approve Transaction - Overview page as a worklist and approvers must access the Approve Transactions pages for each transaction type (if enabled) or drill down to the transaction detail pages. Expenses supports the Deny button and its functionality only on the transaction approval pages but not on the summary pages.

Approvers click the link in the Description or Transaction ID columns to drill down to view transaction details. They can also approve transactions from the detail pages.

On the Expenses Options page, you select the approval preference to govern the system's behavior after an approval action at the transaction detail level. For example, if you select Proceed to the Next Transaction for the approval preference, Expenses displays the next transaction in the approver's queue that is of the same transaction type. If the approver is on the time report approval page, Expenses displays the next time report in the approver's queue. If you select Return to List for the approval preference, Expenses returns the approver to the Summary Approval page after each approval action taken at the detail level.

Approvers can select several transaction on the summary approval page and then click an approval action button. The system still performs all rules that you configured for approvals for each transaction. At any time, approvers can click Refresh List to update their approval queue. If the approver takes an action that requires a comment and they select many transactions for the action, the system applies the comment entered by the approver to all selected transactions.

See Also

Configuring Summary Approval Options

Pages Used for Summary Approvals

Using Summary Approvals for all Transactions

Access the Approve Transactions - Overview page.

Search Pending Transactions

Expenses provides a search utility for the summary approval pages that enable approvers to search for specific transactions in their queue that are pending approval. The search does not apply to transactions that the approver has already processed. This utility is intended for approvers who manage large numbers of transactions for review and approval. You can use this functionality to group transactions by some criteria to be approved with one action. For example, an approver can approve all expense and time reports for a special project before processing other transactions. The approver uses the search utility to select only those transactions.

The search utility enables approvers to add and delete rows; the conditional relationship between all rows is AND. If you select the Select All or Clear All check boxes after a search, the action only applies to those transactions returned in the search. If you click the Refresh List button, the system restores the approver's queue of pending transactions.

Change Sort Order

This section enables you to select up to three columns to reorder transactions in the Transactions Pending Approval grid. Select a sort key from the drop-down list box, select the sort key order (Ascending or Descending), and click Sort List.

Transactions to Approve

Using Summary Approvals for Expense Reports

Access the Approve Transactions - Expense Reports page.

The Approve Transactions - Expense Reports page is similar to the Approve Transactions - Overview page. In this section, we document the page elements that pertain to expense reports that Expenses does not display on the overview page.

See Using Summary Approvals for all Transactions.

Transactions to Approve

Using Summary Approvals for Time Reports

Access the Approve Transactions - Time Reports page.

The Approve Transactions - Time Reports page is similar to the Approve Transactions - Overview page. In this section, we document the page elements that pertain to time reports that Expenses does not display on the overview page.

See Using Summary Approvals for all Transactions.

Transactions to Approve

Using Summary Approvals for Time Adjustments

Access the Approve Transactions - Time Adjustments page.

The Approve Transactions - Time Adjustments page is similar to the Approve Transactions - Overview page. In this section, we document the page elements that pertain to time adjustments that Expenses does not display on the overview page.

See Using Summary Approvals for all Transactions.

Transactions to Approve

Using Summary Approvals for Travel Authorizations

Access the Approve Transactions - Travel Authorizations page.

The Approve Transactions - Travel Authorizations page is similar to the Approve Transactions - Overview page. In this section, we document the page elements that pertain to travel authorizations that Expenses does not display on the overview page.

See Using Summary Approvals for all Transactions.

Transactions to Approve

Using Summary Approvals for Cash Advances

Access the Approve Transactions - Cash Advances page.

The Approve Transactions - Cash Advances page is similar to the Approve Transactions - Overview page. In this section, we document the page elements that pertain to cash advances that Expenses does not display on the overview page.

See Using Summary Approvals for all Transactions.

Transactions to Approve

Approving Expense Reports

This section provides an overview of how to approve expense reports and discusses how to:

• Approve an expense report.

• Approve expense report line details.

• View expense report default accounting.

• View exception comments.

• View approver comments.

• View VAT information.

Understanding How to Approve Expense Reports

After an employee submits an expense report, it goes through the approval process. Part of the approval process can include a review by an internal auditor. Expense reports can be audited before (prepayment) or after (post payment) reimbursement. The audit can be performed by one or many auditors, either sequentially or from a pool of auditors. In some organizations, auditors can only randomly or selectively review expense transactions for audit purposes. To selectively route expense transactions to an approver or auditor, define a refinement template and configure it for selective criteria, then assign to an approver. The criteria established in the refinement filters which transaction an approver or auditor see in their queue. For example, a post payment auditor can review only transactions with project expenses associated with it or expense reports that are missing receipts.

You can authorize approvers and auditors to modify expense transactions through the approvals configuration. The privileges associated with an approver determines what they can change, add, or delete on expense transactions. If you use Project Costing, you can charge some of your expense items to project-related ChartFields and your expense report approval procedures might include a review by a project manager. Project managers can also modify expense transactions if you enable that authorization through the privilege configuration. However, if an expense transaction has been processed for payment, some privileges can be constrained to maintain the integrity of payments issued or information already posted to other products.

Expenses delivers a feature for supplemental or conditional approvers. If you use HR supervisor approvals but want to have an additional approval required as a standard, or based on a transaction condition such as a monetary amount, you can use the expense approver list to define the supplemental approver by profile. If the condition is amount-based, you can define the amount rules for the profile on this list. The same concept applies for project approvals. You can use Project Manager as assigned in Project Costing for standard project approvals, but also use the Project Supplemental Approver list to define a supplemental or conditional approval for project-related expenses.

Note. When using Business Unit or Department criteria in the refinement template, routing is based on the employee's home business unit and department, not the business unit and department contained in the distributions.

Pages Used to Approve Expense Reports

Approving an Expense Report

Access the Approve Expense Report - Expense Report Summary page.

The fields on the Approve Expense Report - Expense Report Summary page are the same as the fields on the Create Expense Report - Expense Report Summary page and are documented in the Processing Expense Reports chapter of this PeopleBook. Fields that are unique for the expense report approval process are documented in this section.

Report Information

Receipt Information

Expense Line Items

Expense Report Totals

Pending Actions

This section displays the names of the approvers, auditors, project managers, and other defined approvers who need to review and approve the expense report.

Action History

Expenses displays the transaction submittal and approval activities that have occurred, as well as the approver's name and date that they took action.

Comments

Enter information regarding the expense report such as why you denied the expense report or an expense transaction line. If you enter comments and send the expense report back to the employee, Expenses displays your comments when the employee modifies the expense report; however, the system does not display comments to the employee in the view mode. After employees resubmit expense reports, Expenses displays comment history only to all approvers.

Approving Expense Report Line Details

Access the Approve Expense Report - Expense Detail for [expense type] page.

Accounting Detail	Click to access the Approve Expense Report - Accounting Detail page to view, add, or modify accounting details for expense transaction lines, depending on the privilege allowed for the approver. Approvers can modify the general ledger or project-related ChartFields, general ledger business unit, or the distribution split amount. If you change the distribution split amount, the total must equal the original amount of the expense transaction.
Add Additional Attendees	Click to access the Expense Report - Attendees page to view the names, companies, and titles for an expense type that required a list of attendees on the expense report.
Receipt Split	Click to access the Approve Expense Report - Receipt Detail for Expense [expense type] page to view the expenses on the receipt or to split an expense on the receipt into smaller, detailed expenses.
Itemize Hotel Bill	Click to access the Approve Expense Report - Itemize Hotel Bill page to split the hotel receipt into more specific charges, such as room and telephone charges.

View Expense Report Default Accounting

Access the Approve Expense Report - Accounting Defaults page.

Access to the Approve Expense Report - Accounting Defaults page depends on how you set up your Approval Privilege Templates.

See Viewing or Modifying Default Accounting.

Viewing Accounting Details

Access the Approve Expense Report - Accounting Detail page.

Access to the Approve Expense Report - Accounting Detail page depends on how you set up your Approval Privilege Templates.

See Viewing or Modifying Accounting Details.

Viewing Exception Comments

Access the Approve Expense Report - View Exception Comments page.

Expenses displays comments for each expense transaction line.

Viewing VAT Information

Access the Approve Expense Report - VAT Information page.

Expense Line VAT Information

VAT Accounting Detail

Approving Time Reports

This section provides an overview of time report approvals and discusses how to approve a time report.

Understanding Time Report Approvals

After you submit a time report, it goes through an approval process. When you enter a time report and submit it for approval, its status changes according to what action is taken at each stage of the process.

Pages Used to Approve Time Reports

Approving a Time Report

Access the Approve Time Report - Time Report Summary page.

The fields on the Approve Time Report - Time Report Summary page are the same as the fields on the Create Time Report - Time Report Summary page and are documented in the Processing Time Reports chapter of this PeopleBook. Fields that are unique for the approval process are documented in this section.

See Preparing Time Reports and Time Adjustments.

Project Time Tab

Pending Actions

This section displays the names of the approvers and project managers who need to review and approve the time report.

Action History

Expenses displays the transaction submittal and approval activities that have occurred, as well as the approver's name and date that they took action.

Comments

Enter information regarding the time report such as why you denied the time report. If you enter comments and send the time report back to the employee, Expenses displays your comments when the employee modifies the time report. After employees resubmit the time reports, Expenses displays comment history only to approvers and project managers.

Approving Time Adjustments

This section discusses how to approve a time adjustment.

Pages Used to Approve Time Adjustments

Approving Time Adjustments

Access the Approve Transactions - Time Adjustments page.

The fields on the Approve Time Report - Time Report Summary page are the same as the fields on the Create Time Report - Time Report Summary page and are documented in the Processing Time Reports chapter of this PeopleBook. Fields that are unique for the approval process of time adjustments are documented in this section.

See Preparing Time Reports and Time Adjustments.

Approving Travel Authorizations

This section provides an overview of travel authorization approvals and discusses how to:

• Approve a travel authorization.

• Approve expense detail lines.

• View travel authorization exception comments.

• View approval comments.

Understanding Travel Authorization Approvals

After an employee submits a travel authorization, it goes through the approval process. From the time that an employee creates the travel authorization until an approver approves it, the travel authorization's status changes, depending on the action taken at each step of the approval process.

Approvers use the Approve Transactions - Overview, Approve Transactions - Travel Authorizations, or Travel Authorization - Travel Authorization Summary pages to review, approve, hold, send back, or deny authorizations. The Travel Authorization - Travel Authorization Summary page is similar to the page that employees use to prepare travel authorization.

Pages Used to Approve Travel Authorizations

Approving a Travel Authorization

Access the Travel Authorization Summary page.

The fields on the Travel Authorization Summary page are the same as the fields on the Travel Authorization Entry page and are documented in the Preparing Travel Authorization chapter of this PeopleBook. Fields that are unique for the approval process are documented in this section.

See Preparing Travel Authorizations.

General Information

The information in this section is from the Report Information page and is not editable by approvers.

Details

Pending Actions

This section displays the names of the approvers, auditors, project managers, and other define approvers who need to review and approve the travel authorization.

Action History

Expenses displays the transaction submittal and approval activities that have occurred, as well as the approver's name and date that they took action.

Comments

Enter information regarding the travel authorization such as why you denied it. If you enter comments and send the travel authorization back to the employee, Expenses displays your comments when the employee modifies the travel authorization; however, the system does not display comments to the employee in the view mode. After employees resubmit travel authorizations, Expenses displays comment history only to all approvers.

Approving Expense Detail Lines

Access the Approve Travel Authorization - Expense Detail for [expense type] page.

Update Accounting Detail

Click to access the Approve Travel Authorization - Accounting Detail page to view, add, or modify accounting details for expense transaction lines, depending on the privilege allowed for the approver. Approvers can modify the general ledger or project-related ChartFields, general ledger business unit, or the distribution split amount. If you change the distribution split amount, the total must equal the original amount of the expense transaction.

Approve Expense

Clear the check box if you do not approve the expense line.

Viewing Travel Authorization Exception Comments

Access the View Exception Comments page.

For each travel authorization line item, Expenses displays the associated expense type, exception, and comment. You can review explanations for line items that do not follow organizational expense policies—for example, not using preferred merchants or exceeding expense location amounts. Click the expense type in the Expense Type column to access the View Expense [expense type] page.

Viewing Approval Comments

Access the View Approval Comments page.

The View Approval Comments page displays comments that approvers have made for the travel authorization request.

Approving Cash Advances

This section provides an overview of cash advance approvals and discusses how to approve a cash advance.

Understanding Cash Advance Approvals

Based on the approval rules that you set up, cash advances can be paid as soon as employees submit them, or they can go through one or more checkpoints for review. If your organization requires auditing, approvers must approve the cash advance before it is eligible for auditing.

From the time the employee creates a cash advance until it is ready for payment, the cash advance's approval status changes, depending on the action taken in each step of the approval process. Expenses immediately sets a cash advance to paid status of the cash advance source does not generate a payment.

Approvers use the Approve Transactions - Overview, Approve Transactions - Cash Advances, or Approve Cash Advance Report pages to approve, hold, send back, or deny authorizations. The Approve Cash Advance Report page is similar to the page that employees use to prepare cash advance requests.

Pages Used to Approve Cash Advances

Approving a Cash Advance

Access the Approve Cash Advance Report page.

The fields on the Approve Cash Advance Report page are the same as the fields on the Create Cash Advance Report page and are documented in the Preparing Cash Advances chapter of this PeopleBook. Fields that are unique for the approval process are documented in this section.

See Preparing Cash Advances.

Pending Actions

This section displays the names of the approvers, auditors, and project managers who need to review and approve the cash advance.

Action History

Expenses displays the transaction submittal and approval activities that have occurred, as well as the approver's name and date that they took action.

Comments

Enter a comment. When you select to return the cash advance request to employees upon denial, the system displays the comments to the employees when they access the cash advance. After employees resubmit returned cash advance requests, the system displays comment history only to approvers.

Viewing Approval Errors

This section provides an overview of approval errors and discusses how to view approval errors.

Understanding Approval Errors

When errors occur as a result of an action taken by an approver, the summary approval page initially refreshes and displays a red flag icon in the Errors column to indicate the transaction is in error from the approval process. Approvers click on the Errors tab to view error messages. Expenses displays an error message for each transaction. The transaction can have multiple errors, but the first error condition that prevented the transaction from being processed is the message that Expenses displays. The error conditions handled are:

• Error in budget checking: Indicates that a transaction has encountered an error in the budget checking process. Approvers must resolve the cause of the exception before performing another budget check.

• Accounting date is invalid: Indicates that the transaction's accounting date is in a closed period.

• Approval action not allowed for your profile: Indicates that the approver performed an approval action on the Approve Transactions pages that they are not authorized to use.

• Transactions must be budget checked prior to approval: Indicates that you must run the budget checking process before you can approve the transaction. This condition applies when an approver selects and tries to approve transactions that must be budget checked prior to approval.

• Processing error – please contact your administrator: Indicates that some type of programming error occurred.

Page Used to View Approval Errors

Viewing Approval Errors

Access the Approve Transactions - Errors page.

Description or Transaction ID

Click the link to access one of the following pages, depending on the transaction type: Expense Report Summary page. Approve Cash Advance Report page. Travel Authorization Summary page. Time Report Summary page.

Modifying Approved Transactions

This section lists the pages used to modify approved transactions.

Note. The pages used to modify approved expense transactions are the same pages used to approve the transactions.

See Approving Expense Reports, Approving Time Reports, Approving Time Adjustments, Approving Travel Authorizations, Approving Cash Advances.

Pages Used to Modify Approved Transactions

Managing Workflow

This section discusses how to:

• Handle notifications.

• Delegate approvals.

• Reassign approvals.

• Reroute approvals

Handling Notifications

The Approval Workflow Engine (AWE) is responsible for sending out notifications based on the definitions set up on the Approval Transaction Registry page. The “Delivered Workflows for Expenses” appendix lists the notifications.

See Also

Delivered Workflows for Expenses

Reassigning Approvals

The Reassign Work feature allows administrators to move approval transactions from one approver's queue to another. This can be necessary if an approver is on leave, but has not defined an alternate approver in their absence. This feature can be used to reroute a transaction that was sent to the wrong approver.

• Reassignment can only be done for the transaction that is pending approval or held in approver's queue.

• When reassigning a transaction to an approver who has already approved the transaction, the system automatically approves the transaction.

• When reassigning a transaction to an approver who is already one of the regular approvers for the transaction, then the transaction only appears once for that approver.

See Also

Reassigning Work for Expense Transactions

Rerouting Approvals

You can reroute transactions to a different approver if you use the rerouting feature in the approval configuration. Rerouting is also referred to as “escalation.” A professional services organization can set escalation to occur if an approver has not performed their approval for a transaction within the duration specified in the transaction definition. For example, if a duration of one day is set for a project manager for time reports and a specific time report has been in the project manager's queue for a day with no action taken, the system routes the transaction to the approver designated in the transaction definition. The escalation process must be enabled and running for this to properly occur.

See Also

Configuring Transaction Types for Expenses

Using Escalations