1. Administering Financial Consolidation and Close
  2. Managing the Approval Process
  3. Managing Approval Phases
  4. Defining Approval Groups

Defining Approval Groups

Administrators define approval groups for their business processes in the Approval Groups card within the Application cluster.

You must be a Service Administrator to create or modify an Approval Group definition. Power Users have View access to the Approval Group definition.

Approval Group Dimension Members

An Approval group can be defined as a combination of members from these dimensions:

  • Account

  • Movement

  • Intercompany

  • Data Source

  • Multi-GAAP

  • Custom1

  • Custom2

  • Custom...X

  • Consolidation - only applicable for amount and rate override accounts

Note that these dimensions are not part of the Approval Group definition:

  • Scenario - AUH Assignment

  • Year - AUH Assignment

  • Period - AUH Assignment

  • Entity - AUH definition

  • View - Periodic

  • Consolidation - N/A as it applies to all members in the dimension

  • Currency - Entity Currency

An Approval Group consists of the following information:

  • Name

  • Description

  • One or more rules defining the multi-dimensional cells (slice definition)

Note that if a dimension is not selected for the rule, it implies that all members for this dimension are included in the rule. Functions as well as exclusions are available for selecting members to be included for the rule.

An Approval group can consist of one or more slices. You should define as many groups as needed for your application. There is no limit as to the number of approval groups you can define. However, an Approval group will only be used for your phased approval when it is assigned to the Approval Unit Hierarchy (AUH).

Rules for Overlapped Cells Among Different Phases

It is possible that the same POV slice is included in one or more approval groups used in different phases within the same Approval Unit Hierarchy.

Let’s assume we have 100 data cells defined in various groups:

  • Group A – cells 1 to 10, 21 to 30

  • Group B – cells 11 to 20, 31 to 50

  • Group B – cells 11 to 20, 31 to 50

  • Group D – cells 91 to 100

  • Group E – cells 1 to 50

  • Group E – cells 1 to 50

Since some cells are included in multiple groups, the system will use the first instance and ignore any subsequent groups in which the cell may also be included.

For example, if account cell 50 is included in both Group A and Group E assigned to the same Approval Unit Hierarchy, then account cell 50 is included in Group A as Group A is the first group assigned within the Approval Unit Hierarchy.

When a user is in Group A, the user can enter data or modify data for the account cell 50. When a user is in Group E, even though cell 50 is part of Group E definition, but because cell 50 has already been included in Group A, it is not considered as part of Group E’s data. In summary, by following the rule for order of precedence where the first instance is included, cell 50 is only included in Group A and not in Group E.

System Approval Group

To ensure that all cells are included in the review process when all phases are locked, the data for the entity is locked. Therefore, a system-created group named FCCS_DefaultGroup is provided to include all members of each applicable dimension.

When the approval groups are assigned to the AUH, the FCCS_DefaultGroup system group is always the last phase of the Approval Unit Hierarchy. This will include all cells that are not defined in any of the previous phases.

To define approval groups:

  1. From the Home page, click Application, and then click Approval Groups.
  2. Create the approval group:
    1. Click Create.
    2. Enter a name and an optional description for the new approval group.
    3. To select the anchor dimension for the approval group, click Add Dimension or click down arrow icon next to Select Anchor Dimension, and select a dimension from the list.
    4. For an explanation of anchor dimensions, see Anchor and Nonanchor Dimensions.
    5. Optional: By default, the anchor dimension members that are not specified in the approval group rule are marked valid. To clear this option, click down arrow icon next to the anchor dimension, and then click Unselected members are valid.
    6. Optional: By default, nonanchor dimensions are not required. To make a nonanchor dimension required, click down arrow icon next to the nonanchor dimension, and click Required.
  3. Define the approval group rule:
    1. Click Add Rule.
    2. To select the range of members to include, exclude, or remove in the application group, click down arrow icon next to the dimensions in the new rule:

    • Click Edit to open the Select Members page and select the members, substitution variables, and attributes to include in the application group rule.

    • Click Add Exclusion to define an exclusion in the rule. You can exclude a subset of what is included for that dimension.

    • Click Clear to clear the selection.

      To delete a rule, click . remove icon.

  4. Click Save and Close.

The new approval group is added to the end of the approval group list. To reorder the rules in a group, click Actions menu icon next to the application group, and then select Move Up or Move Down.

Tip:

You can also drag approval groups to move them up and down in the list.