How Payment Approval Is Processed

The payment approval process allows management to control payments by prioritizing available funds. Payment approval lets you send payments to approvers for review before final payments are made to suppliers or employees.

If enabled, the payment process stops and approvers can optionally remove payments directly from a payment process request and then approve it.

The payment approval process generates and routes payment approval notifications to approvers. Approvers can approve or reject payment process requests directly from e-mails. They can also perform other approval actions from payment approval worklist notifications.

Settings That Affect Payment Approval

To enable payment approval, navigate to Setup and Maintenance, search, and select Manage Disbursement System Options. On the Manage Disbursement System Options page, select the Enable payment approval option.

How Payment Approval Is Processed

When Payment approval is enabled, all payment process requests go through the payment approval process. When a payment process request is submitted, payment approval is automatically triggered after it reaches the Review Proposed Payments stage. The status of the payment process request is then set to Payments Approval Initiated. Payment approvers then receive payment approval e-mail notifications, as well as payment approval BPM Worklist notifications.

As the following table shows, approvers can perform different payment approval actions depending on the payment approval mechanism used, whether from the Review Proposed Payments page, from email notifications, or from BPM Worklist notifications.

Payment Approval Mechanism	Approval Actions Available	Navigation
Review Proposed Payments page	Approve Reject Withdraw approval Resubmit for approval	Navigate to: Spring board > Payables icon > Payments icon > Overview page > Tasks icon > Click Manage Payment Process Requests link > Manage Payment Process Requests page > Status: Pending Proposed Payment Review > Search button > Manage Payment Process Requests page >Action icon > Review Proposed Payments page.
E-mail notification	Approve Reject	Your e-mail inbox.
BPM Worklist notification	Withdraw approval Resubmit for approval Reassign Delegate Request for more information	Navigate to: Tools > Worklist > Financials

To specify a payment approval action on the Review Proposed Payments page, approvers select an option from the Actions menu. The following table lists the payment approval actions that payment process request submitters and approvers can take, when the actions are available, who takes the payment approval action, and the result of the action.

Payment Approval Actions Available on the Review Proposed Payments Page	Availability of Action	Person Performing the Action	Result of Action
Approve payment	Only when the payment process request status is Payments Approval Initiated.	Approvers only.	Allows the payment process request to continue Status of payment process request changes to Approved Once the payment has been approved, the auto resumption process lets the transaction proceed automatically. No manual intervention is required for the transaction after approval.
Reject payment	Only when the payment process request status is Payments Approval Initiated.	Approvers only.	Terminates the payment process request immediately Status of payment process request changes to Terminated
Withdraw approval	Only when the payment process request status is Payments Approval Initiated.	Submitter of the payment process request or approver.	Terminates the payment approval task Status of the payment process request changes to Withdrawn Ensures that all active payment approval notifications are removed from approvers Approver reinitiates payment approval by selecting the Resubmit for approval action after correcting the issue
Resubmit for approval	Only when the payment process request status is Withdrawn from payments approval and Error in payments approval.	Submitter of the payment process request or approver.	Reinitiates the payment approval process for the payment process request Status of payment process request changes to Payments Approval Initiated
Terminate payment process request	Always.	Anyone.	Terminates the payment process Ensures that all active payment approval notifications are removed from approvers

Approvers can review the payment approval statuses of payment process requests that require action on the Requiring Attention tab on the Overview page as the following table lists.

Page	Payment Process Request Approval Statuses	Navigation
Overview page	Payments approval initiated Pending payment approvals Withdrawn from payments approval Payments approved	Requiring Attention tab.