Changing the Status of an Approval Unit

An approval unit changes status each time a reviewer passes the budget to another reviewer. The status of an approval unit is based on what action a reviewer takes to send the budget to another reviewer.

Note:

If the status of a parent approval unit changes, all its children change too, unless they were excluded during the 1st Pass state or were approved.

To change approval unit status:

Click Approvals on the Home page.
Select the approval unit.
See Selecting Approval Units.
From Action, select an action, click Change Status, and then an Owner.
To see the promotion path for the approval unit, click .
Possible Change Status actions:
- Originate: Changes the ownership of all selected approval units (including all descendants) to the first owner defined for that approval unit in the approval unit hierarchy.
  
  Note:
  
  The approval unit first owner differs between the Distribute and Bottom Up templates. With the Distribute template, the first owner is the owner at the top of the approval unit hierarchy. With the Bottom Up template, the first owner is an owner at the bottom of the approval unit hierarchy.
- Start: Begins the budget process and changes the approval unit status to First Pass.
- Promote: Passes the approval unit to another person to review. This action assigns ownership of an approval unit the first time, and thereafter transfers ownership of an approval unit from one reviewer to another. Promote causes an implicit signoff by the current owner and changes the approval unit status to Under Review.
- Exclude: Excludes an approval unit from the budget process.
- Reject: Indicates the approval unit requires more work from the previous owner. Reject typically requires the previous owner to create another iteration. By default, Reject returns approval unit ownership to the previous owner, but you may select the next owner. Reject changes the approval unit status to Not Signed Off.
- Approve: Approves the approval unit and changes its status to Approved. With the Distribute or Bottom Up templates, only the last owner in the promotional path can approve the approval unit. With the Free Form template, a person can approve approval units from any status except Not Started. Only the last reviewer in the promotion path can approve from a Not Signed Off or First Pass status.
  
  Approving an approval unit is an implicit reviewer signoff. Typically, an approval unit is approved only once. However, an administrator can reopen an approved approval unit.
- Delegate: Passes ownership to a person not on the promotional path. Select a person from Owner to pass ownership to that person. The specified user selects Promote when done to return the budget to the first approver on the promotional path. This action is available with the Bottom Up and Distribute templates.
- Take Ownership: Become the owner of the approval unit and any level-0 approval units under a selected parent approval unit. Available to the current user and users above the current approval unit owner in the approval unit hierarchy.
- Freeze: Locks all related data in descendant approval units. This action makes all related data read only, but does not change ownership of any approval unit.
- Distribute, Distribute Children, or Distribute Owner: Passes approval unit ownership to multiple people. Distribute actions work differently, depending on the current location of the budget in the approval unit hierarchy. These actions are for an approval unit hierarchy using the Distribute template.
  
  Distribute assigns ownership to the members at the current level of the approval unit hierarchy. Distribute Children assigns approval unit ownership to the children of the current owner. Distribute Owner assigns approval unit ownership to the level-0 owner defined during approval unit hierarchy creation.
- Sign Off: Signs off on an approval unit. Sign Off does not transfer ownership of the approval unit, but changes its state to Signed Off.
- Submit: Submits the approval unit to the next level.
- Submit to Top: Gives ownership to the top person defined in the hierarchy.
- Reopen: Reopens an approved approval unit.
Click Done.