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Businesses must apply tight control to all of their data; to ensure that their business processes are under control and that they can pass regulatory compliance audits.
The JD Edwards World Approvals Management system provides a powerful, highly configurable way to monitor activity within your system. Managers can define conditions such as a change in credit limit or security tax that trigger the creation of an approval request. The approval request contains a set of approvers responsible for monitoring the condition. In some cases, the approver may only need notification of the condition. In other cases, the system might require the approver to approve or reject the condition.
The Approvals Management system refers to conditions as rules. A rule is a condition that the system interprets as either true or false. For example, you create a rule that states when a customer's credit limit changes to a value greater than 10,000, the credit limit change must be approved. If a user changes the Credit Limit field to 25,000 then the system submits the change for approval.
You can group multiple conditions together into one statement. For example, if a customer's credit limit increases above 10,000 then the approver in human resources must approve it. This statement contains two conditions, did the credit limit increase, and is it above 10,000? Both conditions must be true before the approver must approve it.
You group rules together into rule sets by system. You customize rule sets to include any field in any file within a specific system. The approval type distinguishes which system to which the rule set applies. For example, approval type AB refers to the Address Book system.
The Approvals Management system creates an approval request whenever a rule is true. The creation of an approval request triggers email notifications to one or more people who will approve or reject the request. The approval request contains audit information that remains in the system after the request is approved or rejected, providing an audit trail tracking changes over time.
A rule contains an assignee. The assignee is the person who receives notification of the condition. An assignee can be setup as the person to notify or an approver. An assignee setup as the person to notify receives email notification but is not required to approve the approval request. An assignee setup as an approver receives email notification and is required to approve or reject the approval request.
You can assign one or more assignees to a rule set using approver groups or routes. An approver group is a group of assignees that you can assign to multiple rules. For example, an approver group name HR Managers contains all of the HR managers responsible for approving changes to employee records. You can assign approver group HR Managers to all rules dealing with employee records.
Approver routes are hierarchal groups of approvers. You assign each assignee to a level on the route. Assignees must approve the approval request in the order they appear on the route. You use routes to define a hierarchy of assignees based on job function. For example, a department consists of line level employees, supervisors, managers, and a vice president. You create the route with the supervisor on the first level, manager on the second level, and vice president on the third level. The manger is not able to approve or reject the request until the supervisor approves the request. The vice president is not able to approve or reject the request until the manager approves the request.
The Approvals Management system includes approver substitution functionality. One approver can be setup as a substitute for another approver. The approver substitution file contains effective dates you use to define the beginning and end dates of the substitution. You can also make substitutions permanent. Permanent substitution replaces one user for another on the assigned approver list and all other setup files in the Approvals Management system.
Actions that users perform on records in the system are referred to as transactions. For example, creating a new Address Book entry is part of an Address Book add transaction. Changing a category code on an existing Address Book record is part of an Address Book change transaction.
You assign rule sets to transaction types using the approval schedule. The approval process interprets the approval schedule and determines which rules to apply to the transaction. Whenever a user submits a transaction, the approval process retrieves the appropriate rule sets from the approver schedule using the transaction type. The system compares the transaction to the rule sets. If a rule is true, the system creates an approval request. If none of the rule sets equate to true, the system enters the transaction into the production environment.
Approving every change in a system can be cumbersome. Setting Proof Mode in the Approval Constants allows the system to logically group changes to transactions. The system saves the changes within a transaction to workfiles. Other users cannot view or use the changes in a transaction until the originator of the change submits it to the system for processing.
Users can view transactions using the Transaction Workbench program (P00A11). The Transaction Workbench allows the originating user to view the transaction detail, submit the transaction, or cancel the transaction. In some cases, the user who created the transaction might decide the changes are not necessary and cancel the transaction. If the user submits the transaction, the system moves the changes within the transaction from the workfile to the production file. You can run the Approvals Management system in proof mode with approval processing deactivated. However, you must activate Proof Mode if the Approvals Management system is active.
After you activate Approvals Management processing, the system compares data in transactions you submit to the appropriate rule sets before moving the transactions to production. The system creates an approval request when it evaluates a rule to be true. The system does not move changes in a transaction to production until the appropriate person (approver) approves the approval request. If the approver rejects the request, the system rejects the transaction and the data does not move to production. Approvers you assign to an approval request can view and approve or reject approval requests using the Approvals Workbench program (P00A12). The system automatically moves the transaction data from the workfiles to production once the last approver approves the approval request.
Email messages can be sent from the approvals management system in:
Real-time, using Send Distribution
Batch, using the Approvals Email Processor
The Approvals Email Processor uses the Electronic Document Delivery (EDD) system to send email messages. The EDD system provides email formatting options not available when using the Send Distribution functionality. See Chapter 10, "Work with EDD" for more information.
Use the Timecard Approval Workbench to review and manage timecards controlled by the Approvals Management application. You use the Timecard Approval Workbench to approve or reject timecards and to monitor timecards in process.
The Timecard Approval Workbench was customized for payroll timecard approvals only and therefore differs slightly from the standard Approvals Management Workbench. The Timecard Approval Workbench has additional selection fields and detail formats.
Use the Timecard Email Processor to process e-mail in batch for the approvals management system. You can run this program via Unattended Operations (G9643), which allows you to choose when the notifications occur. The system sends the e-mail message using the Electronic Document Delivery system (G00E).
Approvals Management for Address Book includes the following files:
Any change to these files, including additions, deletions, or changes to existing records, triggers the creation of a transaction. The type of transaction the system creates has to do with the type of the change.
The system creates Address Book add transactions whenever a user creates a new address book number. The system adds other related records in the Address Book files, such as Who's Who, Addresses by Date, Contact Phone Numbers, and so forth to the open transaction until the user submits it.
The system creates Address Book change transactions whenever a user changes an existing Address Book number, including the addition or deletion of any of the records in related Address Book files. For example, adding additional who's who records or address records to an existing Address Book record is part of an Address Book change transaction.
The system creates Address Book delete transactions when a user deletes an existing address book record.
Approvals Management for Purchase Orders includes the following files:
F4301 - Purchase Order Header
F4311 - Purchase Order Detail
Any change to these files, including additions, deletions, or changes to existing records, triggers the creation of a transaction. The type of transaction the system creates depends on which purchase order approval processes are active; purchase order header, or purchase order detail.
If purchase order header approval is active and purchase order detail approval is inactive, the system creates a purchase order header transaction if you make an addition or change to the F4301 or the F4311. The transaction detail contains information that relates to the F4301 record and any related F4311 records.
If both the purchase order header approval and purchase order detail approval is active, the system creates a purchase order header transaction if you make an addition or change to the F4301. The transaction detail contains information that relates to the F4301 record. The system creates a purchase order detail transaction if you make an addition or change to F4311. The transaction detail contains information related to the F4311 record.
If purchase order header approval is inactive and purchase order detail approval is active, the system creates a purchase order detail transaction if you make an addition or change to the F4311. The transaction detail contains information related to the F4311 record.
Approvals Management includes the following tasks:
Set up Approvals Management
Process Transactions using Approvals Management
Run Approvals Management Reports