1. Administering Planning
  2. Accessing More Administrative Tasks
  3. Managing Approvals
  4. About the Approvals Process
  5. Approvals Process

Approvals Process

The approval unit moves from one reviewer to another until the budget process is complete. The review process follows the promotional path you set up when you select the owner and reviewers for an approval unit, unless an event triggers a change in the promotional path. Events that affect the promotional path include:

  • Exceeding or not reaching expense boundaries for budget items such as salaries, new hires or capital equipment

  • The current owner returning the budget to the previous owner for additional information

  • The current owner requesting help from an authorized user who isn't necessarily on the promotional path

The selected approvals template determines the first user to review the budget (see Setting Approval Unit Hierarchy Name, Scope, and Template). The first user completes the assigned tasks, then promotes (Bottom Up template) or submits (Distribute template) the budget, which alerts the next owner that the budget requires their attention. Other users may also be notified whenever the budget passes from one user to another.

Each reviewer must validate the approval unit before sending the budget to the next reviewer. The validation runs all data validation rules defined for the approval unit with which the reviewer is working, and reports any data errors or changes in the approval unit promotional path. See Modifying the Approval Unit Promotional Path.

Tip:

To display users' full names (instead of their user IDs) in Approvals, select the option Display Users’ Full Names, as described in What Application and System Settings Can I Specify?.