Approval Unit States

Each approval unit has a status, depending on where it is in the review process.

An approval unit has one of the following status:

• Not Started: Initial state of all approval units. An administrator begins the review process using the Start action, which changes an approval unit's state to either First Pass (in the free-form template); Under Review and first in the promotion path (in the bottom-up template); or Under Review and last in the promotion path (in the distribute template).

  Note:

  First and Last in the promotion path are not states but locations of where and who owns the approval unit.

• 1st Pass: Beginning state of approval units selected for the budgeting process. Approval units have no owners during First Pass. People having write permission can enter data and promote approval units during the 1st Pass state. During this state, administrators may exclude members from approval units.

  When an approval unit is ready for review, you select one of several actions, changing approval unit status and passing ownership. To be notified by email if you become the owner of an approval unit, see Setting Up Email for Notifications and Setting Approvals Options.

  Note:

  When using the free-form template for approvals, you must assign the next owner.

• Under Review: Occurs after a Promote or Submit action, and means that someone is reviewing the approval unit. Only the current owner or administrators can change data on approval units whose state is Under Review. While Under Review, approval units may undergo iterations of promotions, submissions, signoffs, and rejections until they are finally approved.

• Frozen: All related data in descendant approval units is locked (read only). The owner who froze the approval units, or an owner above that person, selects Unfreeze to reverse this action.

• Distributed: Multiple people are reviewing the budget. The reviewers are filtered by permissions and specified reviewers for the distribute action selected (Distribute, Distribute Children, or Distribute Owner).

• Not Signed Off: Occurs when the owner or administrator selects Reject. Only the current owner or administrator can change data or perform an action on an approval unit whose state is Not Signed Off.

• Approved: Occurs when Approve is selected. The last person in the promotional path (the owner of the approval unit) becomes the owner, regardless of whether they are an owner or a reviewer. Owners can edit the data if they have write permission to the member combination that defines the approval unit, and can perform the Approve action. Reviewers who are the last person in the promotional path can't edit the data in the approval unit, but can perform the Approve action. After all approval units are approved, the budgeting cycle is complete.

Notes:

• In all states except Not Started, people with read permission can view data, view the approval state, view the history, and read and add annotations.

• An approval unit may skip approval states.

• The review process can be managed at a higher level with parent approval units.

• Approval unit owners and reviewers can be individuals, or they can be a group. See About Group-based Approvals in Administering Planning.

Note:

The actions available when changing approval unit status depend on which Approvals template is selected. For example, when using the distribute template, people can select Submit to pass ownership to the next user in the promotional path. When using the bottom-up template, however, Submit is not available. Instead, people select Promote to pass ownership to the next person in the promotional path. The Freeze and Unfreeze actions are available only for the bottom-up and distribute templates.