Understanding Summary Approvals

PeopleSoft Expenses delivers a configuration design that enables you to configure an approver for any type of role, whether it is line manager or auditor. 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. PeopleSoft Expenses enables reviewers, approvers, and auditors to view and approve some or multiple transactions in their queues 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, PeopleSoft Expenses does not display the Approve, Reviewed, Send Back, Hold, or Budget Check button on the Approve Transaction - Overview page if you deselect the Overview and Error Pages check box on the Summary Approval Options page. In this case, PeopleSoft 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. PeopleSoft Expenses supports the Deny button and its functionality only on the transaction approval pages but not on the summary pages.

The Approve Transactions pages display urgency, risk, and alert images to help the approver with his or her decision-making process. Approvers can sort transactions based on urgency or risk, and they can click the risk button to access risk details.

Approvers click the link in the Description or Transaction ID column 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, PeopleSoft 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, PeopleSoft Expenses displays the next time report in the approver's queue. If you select Return to List for the approval preference, PeopleSoft Expenses returns the approver to the Summary Approval page after each approval action taken at the detail level.

Approvers can select several transactions on the summary approval page and then click an approval action button. The system still observes all rules that you configured for approvals, for each transaction. At any time, approvers can click Refresh List to update their approval queues. 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.