Workflow of Budget and Forecast Approvals

Use Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) workflows to manage budget and forecast approvals. To do so, select to use workflow for status changes when creating or editing a financial plan type.

The following is a description of security considerations, approval rules, and the workflow process.

Addressing Security and Setting Approval Rules

Project administrators can use the Manage Project Roles task in the Setup and Maintenance work area to configure the project roles and individual participants that receive budget or forecast version creation and withdrawal notifications. Such notifications can include various descriptive flexfields.

When the project administrator or project manager creates a budget or forecast version and submits them for approval, the application sends notifications to all the participants that are configured to receive notifications.

The project administrator can configure the project roles and individual participants who receive notifications using the Manage Project Roles task in the Setup and Maintenance work area.

The submitted budget or forecast versions undergo a single level of approval. However, during implementation, you can define approval rules based on the following parameters:

• Total raw cost

• Total burdened cost

• Labor effort

• Equipment effort

• Margin percentage

• Margin

For example, set rules such as:

• If total burdened cost is less than or equal to $50,000, then the project administrator can approve budget versions.

• If total burdened cost is greater than $50,000, then the project manager must approve budget versions.

By default, the project manager can approve the budget or forecast versions. Additionally, a project administrator can configure which participants can approve the budget or forecast versions, depending on the business requirements.

You can view the details of the pending approvals for the financial plans from the Manage Budget Versions or Manage Forecast Versions pages. You can also view the approval hierarchy and the actions pending or taken by the approver.

When the project administrator or project manager withdraws the notifications or the workflow results in errors, the application reverts the status of the budget or forecast versions to the previous status.

Understanding the Budget and Forecast Status Flow

The following table and figure describe the stages in the budget and forecast status flow.

Action Performed	Status	Notification Sent To	Action Required
Create version	Working	Creator (requester)	None.
Submit version	Submitted	Requester, approver, project roles, and participants	Approver can approve or reject version.
Approve version	Approved or Baseline	Requester, approver, project roles, and participants	None.
Reject version	Rejected	Requester, approver, project roles, and participants	None. Requester can optionally rework version.
Rework version	Working	Requester, approver, project roles, and participants	None.