Expense Approval Notification and Creating Multiple Level of Approval

Hi,

In blue, you will find what may be the cause if you don’t want to read it all.

1- Multiple levels

1. On Approval

The On Approval option from the Rule Actions tab of the Approval Maps screen defines the approval status of the document once the approver associated with the rule approves.

Each rule is under a step and a document can have multiple approval steps associated with it. A step can be about the amount, another one, about the project used in the document, for example.

Then, On approval of a rule, here are the scenarios. The rule itself is approved (Collect All Approvals from This Step) but not the step and not the document, the step (Complete Step) is approved but not the document or the document is approved (Approve Document).

That being, in you example, you have a single step and 2 rules. Therefore, On approval, you should select 

• Collect All Approvals from This Step: After one approver approves the record, the system waits until other appointed approvers (if any) also approve the record.
• Complete Step: After one approver approves the record, the system proceeds to the next step without following the remaining rules in this step (if any).
• Approve Document: The document or record becomes approved after one approver approves it; the remaining rules and steps are ignored by the system.

2. No Approver

The options of the Step’s Conditions tab of the Approval maps screen can also influence the approval status of the document.

• If no approver found option: if no approver is found for a rule of the step, there are 3 options. This means that the document can be approved if the document doesn’t comply to conditions listed for the rules. You usually want to add a “catch” all rule in a “catch all step” to force the approval of a document.
  • Reject Document: The document or record is rejected.
  • Approve Document: The document or record is approved.
  • Go to Next Step: The system proceeds to the next step in the approval map. If the system has reached the last step in the map and no conditions have been met to assign an approver yet, no approver is assigned to the document or record.
• Execute step option: An extra condition for executing the step. The following options are available:
  • Always (default): The step is executed regardless of whether the conditions in any previous step have been met and an approver has been assigned to the record.
  • “Catch all” step: If No Approvers Found at Previous Steps: The step is executed only if all the conditions in all the previous steps have not been met and no approvers have been assigned to the record. If at least one approver has been assigned to approve the record after all the previous steps in the map have been executed, the system does not execute this step.

2- Notifications

First, verify if there is an approver defined on the Approvals tab of the Expense Claims screen and if the status of said claim is Pending Approval.

Then, verify if an email activity has been created at the All Emails screen. The status of the email activity could be Pending.

I would make myself the approver for the claim and select the ((Approval.OwnerID.EMail)) at the To of the email template. That way, I would make sure that once, the map is fixed, approvers will receive the emails.

Hello @jzhu ,

Here is an example of multi-level approval where the first approver may approve PO below $7500.  Purchases over $7500 are approved by the same person in level 1 before going on to a different Level 2 approver. I hope this example helps you.

Level 2:

I don’t think you will need a Business Event to send expense claim notifications; you just need an expense claim in Pending Approval status with an Approver Name or Workgroup populated on the Approval tab of the Expense Claim.

Are your other emails working (Email send from Acumatica is scheduled and is otherwise working properly)?

Laura

Laura

Hi @Eric Ratté

Thank you for the thorough explanation. I do have a couple more questions hoping you could answer. 

1. I realized that there is no approver defined on the Approvals tab of the Expense Claims screen, there is only assigned to. 

In the Rule Actions tab in Approval Maps, my approval setting is set up as follow, what would cause the approver to not show up in expense claims screen? 

2. If I want multilevel approval, should there be two different steps, or should it be one step and two rules like I had in my original screenshot? What about in a different situation if the second level authority does not need to approve it again, just an email sent to him to let him know the document has been approved? I would assume that would be business event? 

Thank you for your help!

Hi,

1- When the rule runs, it assigns the approver as the Assignee ID. Then, the person that approves will be the approver.

In this example, Michael was the one that supposed to approve based on the rule. However, Maxwell approve the document because he is the supervisor of Michael and wanted to help him out.

2- If the rules are of the same nature (depending on the department, for example), I would create 1 single step and have a rule by department.

If for example, there is one approver by department, and another approval needed when the claim exceed a certain amount, then, 2 steps.

If you want people be notified when the approval when through, a business event is the way to go.

Hi @Eric Ratté 

Thanks again! My condition for each rule is that whoever the person reports to, will be able to approve the document. There is no workgroup involved. In that case can the supervisor still approve as well? For example, A reports to B, so B will be the “assigned to” person for all A’s documents. If C is the supervisor of B, can C approve the document too? My assumption is no but want to confirm that. 

Hi @Laura02 

Thank you for your example. it does help me understand a bit more. But I think my situation is a little different. I just need the approval to go to whoever the person reports to in a hierarchical format, where A approves B, B approves C and so on. 

Also, I now realize that the email notifications are sending, but they remain in the pending process section. 

1- Your assumption is correct. I recommend using workgroups as well as owners.

2- In your case, instead of creating multiple rules, you can create a first rule with the condition Reports To Is Not Empty and select the approver being the Reports to field from the employee for which the claims is for:

Then, a second “Catch all” rule when there is no Reports to defined for an employee.

3- You should TEST the connection of the From email at the Email Accounts screen and verify the Email Preferences screen.

Hi @Eric Ratté! I am trying with your recommendation on using workgroup. Just so I’m understanding correctly… 

Person 1-4 are all in the Internal Expense Approval Group. There is also a condition set on each person where they are to approve the employees that reports to them. But since all four people are in the same work group, does it mean these claims will show up for everyone in this workgroup to approve? Is this similar to what you had said above where the supervisor of these approvers can also go in to approve since they are in the same workgroup? Thanks!

Hello,

To send all expense claims to Employees’ Direct Supervisor:

Nothing needed on Conditions tab.

On Rule Actions, select Approver = Employee from Document. Then click + symbol, then click + to expand choices under Employee as shown. Find and Click on Reports to:

When you select Reports To, Acumatica changes the field name to SupervisorID:

Now every Expense Claim will automatically route to each employee’s direct supervisor.

Your second Step will need a condition to check for the Expense claim having a prior Approver populated, and it needs to check for Department of the employee.

Departments need to be listed in the Company Tree with the Supervisor at the top of  each Department and each employee in the Department listed underneath.

Laura

@Laura02 Thank you for the step by step guide! I have the first step same as yours, in terms of the second, suppose I don’t need a second level approval, I need other executives to be able to see expense submitted to each other’s approval screen… would I put them in an workgroup in that case? So if one supervisor is out of office today, I want another supervisor to be able to see this person’s approval requests and come in and approve for him. 

Hi,

I understand you don’t want the second level approval by Dept; you want each Executive to see all Expense Claims awaiting approval. Correct? 

1. Add to the Company Tree one Branch called ‘Executives’ containing all executives, and under Executives one more branch including all people who submit Expense Claims. Check to see: Do you see what you need in My Approvals versus My WorkGroup’s Approvals tab of Approvals screen?  --  I think WorkGroup approvals tab will be blank because the Approval map shown above sends approvals to individual Reports To, not to the Executives Workgroup.

2. Next, add the Executives as Delegates to each other in the Employees screen. Executives should now be able to see all Approvals because they are delegates to each other.  (Test this idea thoroughly - it could be hard to know whose approvals are whose, possibly, when all executives can see all claims awaiting approval.)

Depending on your testing results in step 2, it may be more efficient to organize Delegates to cover specific periods of time when the first approver is know to be out of office:

Laura