Approval paths define who reviews a timesheet or expense report and the order in which approvals occur.
Approval paths, made up of levels of approval, allow you to define a workflow for the approval of a timesheet or expense report. At each level within an approval path you may define who is required to approve (employee manager, project managers, or specific approvers). Levels of approval are steps in the approval workflow. Lower levels (1 being the lowest) must approve before higher levels (5 being the highest). This provides flexibility when defining who should approve and when. Approvers defined at the same level will see the pending approval in their queue and may approve at the same time. Once all approvers in the first level have approved the item the approvers in the second level, if a second level is defined, are notified and may then review and approve. This process continues until all approvers in each level have approved the item. If at any time an approver rejects the item all pending approvals are removed from approver queues and the employee is notified.
Note: Approvers in higher levels are not notified and do not see the pending approval request until all lower levels have approved the item.
You may create different approval paths for different employees, groups of users, as well as use different approval paths for timesheets and expense reports (e.g. your expense reports may require different approvers from your timesheets). Once your approval paths are defined you may configure employee timesheet and expense report approvals to use the approval paths by modifying the Timesheet Approval Path and Expense Approval Path settings in the employee profiles. For more information regarding how to change these settings see Employees.
Note: When you convert from standard approvals to advanced approvals a default approval path of "Employee Manager" was created during the conversion process and associated with all of your existing users (as "standard approvals" only involved the employee's manager with regards to time/expense approvals). Feel free to modify or remove this default approval path and create new ones.
Note: If an employee does not have a manager defined in their employee profile and the approval workflow requires the approval of the employee's manager that specific manager approval request in the workflow will be automatically approved by the system.
In this example we have defined 3 levels. At level 1 project managers are requested to approve. When all of the project managers have approved the item the system proceeds to level 2 approvals and requests the employee's manager to approve. Once the employee's manager approves the item the system moves on to the final level and requests James, for example, in accounting to approve the submitted item. Once James approves the item it is fully approved. If at any point in the approval workflow the item is rejected it is immediately sent back to the employee for review and is removed from the approval queue of any remaining approvers.
Options and field descriptions #
Name – The name of the approval path. Provide a name that would help identify the approval path ('Timesheet approvals', 'Employee Manager then James', etc.).
Use this as the default timesheet approval path for new employees – When selected the system will automatically set this approval path as the 'Timesheet Approval Path' setting when adding a new employee profile.
Use this as the default expense approval path for new employees – When selected the system will automatically set this approval path as the 'Expense Approval Path' setting when adding a new employee profile.
Approval Level Configuration
Column 1 (Level) – Select the level for the approval. Lower levels (1 being the lowest) approve before higher levels (5 being the highest). Column 2 (Approver) – Select who should approve at the specified level.
Tip: You may define more than one approver at the same level. For example, if both project managers and the employee's manager should review/approve an item when it is submitted for approval, you may set both at level 1. The levels allow you to break up when approvers are notified (e.g. perhaps accounting should not be notified unless the manager approves the item first; in which case the manager would be at a lower level than accounting).
Restrictions – You may restrict the amount of data a project manager can see when reviewing a timesheet or expense report for approval.
Do Not Restrict Project Manager's View – Project managers will be able to review and see all items on the timesheet or expense report. Restrict Project Manager's View – Project managers will be able to review and see only the time or expenses for projects they are the manager of.
Note: This option is only available when at least 1 approval path level is set to Project Manager(s). Because this option could prevent some items on a timesheet or expense report from being viewed by project managers (e.g. time off), at least 1 unrestricted approval level must also exist.