Approval workflow

Using the approval workflow, you can have employee expenses reviewed by one or more approvers. Approvers can approve or reject expenses. Once an expense has been approved, it can subsequently be exported to accounting.

If an expense is rejected, the employee can make the necessary corrections and then submit it for review again.

Use the approval workflow

To use the approval workflow, you must first specify which users can act as approvers and then assign the corresponding employees to them.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open TEAM → Administration.
2. Select the user who should be able to approve expenses by name and go to the Roles/Permissions tab.
3. Enable the Approve expenses for users (Approver) permission and save the changes.
4. Go to the Review/Release tab. In the lower section For whom is … an approver?, click Add employee to assign the employees whose expenses this user should review and approve.

Alternatively, you can manage the assignment from the employee's perspective. To do this, go to TEAM → Administration → select the user by name → Review/Release tab of the employee. In the upper section Who approves the expenses of …?, click Add approver to assign one or more approvers to this employee.

Multiple approvers

An employee can be assigned multiple approvers. Conversely, an approver can be responsible for multiple employees. This allows, for example, a second person to review the expenses while the usual approver is on vacation.

The approval rule One approval is sufficient currently applies. The approval has a single level: the first decision by any of the assigned approvers counts. If an approver approves the expense, it is approved. If an approver rejects it, it is rejected. The other approvers no longer need to decide.

The rule All must approve is already shown in the interface but is marked as Coming soon. It cannot be used yet.

You can manage approvers and the approval rule on the Review/Release tab.

Employees without an approver

If you do not assign an approver to an employee, the employee enters their expenses and approves them directly themselves. In this case, the expenses do not go through the approval workflow.

Approval procedure

1. The employee enters their receipts and trips.
2. Once the entry is complete, the employee clicks the In progress status to change the status.
3. In the dialog that appears, the employee can enter a comment for the approvers and submit the expense for review.
4. The assigned approvers receive a notification on the dashboard and by email that an expense is awaiting review.
5. The approvers open the Review and Approval approval view under the TEAM menu and open the expense to be reviewed.
6. After reviewing the expense, an approver can approve it or reject it with a reason.
7. The employee receives a notification on the dashboard and/or by email about the result of the review.

If multiple approvers are assigned and the One approval is sufficient rule applies, the first decision counts: the expense is approved or rejected as soon as one of the approvers has approved or rejected it.

If the expense is rejected, the employee can make the necessary changes and then submit the expense for review again.

Enter expenses as a deputy

Deputies and additional approvers are two different functions: a deputy enters expenses for an employee (Deputy tab). Who approves the expenses is set in the Review/Release tab.

If you enter expenses as a deputy on behalf of an employee, the employee's approval workflow applies to these expenses.

If one or more approvers are assigned to the employee, the expense is submitted to these approvers for review. This also applies if you, as the deputy, are allowed to approve your own expenses or if different approvers are assigned to you.

As a deputy, you also receive an email and a notification on the dashboard informing you of the result of the review.

Change or remove approver assignments

Approvers can be added or removed from existing assignments at any time on the Review/Release tab.

You can manage the assignment from both perspectives:

• In the upper section, you can remove an approver assigned to the currently selected employee by clicking the X on the right-hand side of the corresponding row.
• In the lower section, you can remove an employee assigned to the currently selected approver by clicking the X on the right-hand side of the corresponding row.

If multiple approvers are assigned to an employee, individual approvers can be removed even if the employee still has expenses awaiting review. This is possible as long as at least one other approver remains assigned.

Important: The last approver assigned to an employee cannot be removed while the employee still has expenses awaiting review.

If you want to remove the last approver, you have the following options:

• First assign another approver to the employee. You can then remove the previous approver.
• First process all expenses that are still awaiting review. Once there are no expenses awaiting review, the last approver can also be removed.
• Expenses that are still under review can, where applicable, be returned to In progress. Once there are no expenses awaiting review, the approver assignment can be removed.

For more information about setting up and managing approvers, see the article Review/Approval.