Approval of management objects

From the Desktop Application, employees can request the approval of a manager or of the person in charge so they can make progress on some management objects. For example, when employees create quotations in the Desktop, they might need the approval of a manager or of the person in charge to be allowed to transform these quotations into sales orders. These approval requests are gathered and can be accessed from the portal so the manager can quickly and easily approve the different management objects.

A manager can approve seven types of management objects:

  • quotations;
  • sales orders;
  • quotes;
  • purchase orders;
  • purchase invoices;
  • expense reports;
  • custom requests, that can also be requested from the portal's Employee module.

The details of the management object can be displayed before the manager approves or denies it. The manager can get a preview of the documents linked to the management object, can download these documents, can send emails to the employee who requested the approval or even generate the payment authorization for purchase invoices. For expense reports, it is also possible to deny some expense lines that should not be refunded to the employee, while approving the expense report as a whole. Depending on the setup, managements objects can be approved by multiple people: it is a multiple-level approval.

Approvals are managed from the Approvals menu in the Manager module.

The Approvals menu displays all the existing approval requests of the connected user or of another employee. This menu is used to view all the management objects or the custom requests waiting to be approved, the ones that have already been approved as well as the ones that have been denied.

In the search field, fill in the first letters of the custom request's name, the business document, the requester or even the project.

Note

The search field works for the management objects but not for the lines contained in the objects.

The approval requests matching the search criteria are updated directly so it is easy to find the desired approval request.

From the screen's header, it is also possible to narrow down the approval requests displayed to easily find the desired one:

Field Description
Sort by

Select how the approval requests are sorted from the drop-down list.

  • Approv. request date - approval requests are sorted by the approval request date (for requests to be approved) or by the approval date (for approved requests), in ascending or descending order
  • Third-party - approval requests are sorted by requester, in alphabetical or reversed order
  • Amount - approval requests are sorted by the amount associated with the management object, in ascending or descending order
Approver

Select the employee from the drop-down list to display the approval requests assigned to this employee.

By default, the connected user is selected.

Approvals can be filtered by type (quotation, order, custom request, and so on) or by approval state (to be approved, approved, denied).

1 From the list of approval requests, click Filter.

The Advanced filters window opens.

2 In the window, check the relevant boxes for the filters that should be applied. You can combine as many filters as necessary.
3 Click Apply.

The approval requests matching the filters applied are displayed. The other approval requests are hidden.

To delete the filters applied, click Filter then Remove filters.

Note

The excl tax display option enables you to display pre-tax or after-tax amounts. When this option is active, the amounts displayed in the objects list and the detailed forms are pre-tax amounts. When this option is disabled, the amounts displayed are after-tax amounts.

To approve or deny an approval request, the request must be opened.

To do this, click on the desired approval request in the list of the Approvals menu. The approval request's details is displayed on the right of the screen.

1 Open the approval request then click on Approve.

A window opens.

2 In the window, specify a Comment if needed then click Confirm.

The approval request is approved.

To remove the approval, open the approved request, click on Remove approval then confirm the removal.

Note

Once all approvers of different ranks have approved a purchase invoice, the invoice's payment authorization reaches 100%. The date on the payment authorization is the last approval date.

An expense report can be approved even if some of its expenses are denied. This way, approved expenses can be refunded and denied expenses will not be taken into account when calculating the total amount to be refunded.

Example

The expense report of an employee contains a wrong expense, for example a travel expense that was not for business purposes. However, all the other expenses in the expense report can be refunded.

The approver can therefore deny the wrong expense but still approve the expense report.

1 From the details of an expense report's approval request, locate the expense to be denied in the expense list. You can click on to the left of each expense to display its details.
2 For the expense line, click on in the Deny column.
3 In the denial window, fill in the reasons for this denial, then click Confirm.

The expense is denied. The line is crossed out and displayed in red. The amount of the denied line is deducted from the Total refunded in EUR amount displayed at the bottom of the expense list.

To cancel the denial, click on in the Deny column then confirm the cancellation. When the denial is canceled, the refunded amount is updated based on the original amount of the expense.

DMF 190903 WEB PORTAL APPROVALS MODIFY EXPENSE

For an expense report to be approved, it is possible to modify some expenses of another employee before approving the expense report. All the rules, all the expense report profiles and all the refund thresholds applied are the ones set up for the expense report's employee.

1 From the details of an expense report's approval request, locate the expense to be modified in the expense list. You can click on to the left of each expense to display its details.
2 For the expense line, click on in the Details column.
3 Modify the fields needed in the expense form then click on Save.

The expense has been modified.

1 Open the approval request then click Deny.

A window opens.

2 In the window, specify a Comment if needed to explain why it is denied then click Confirm.

The approval request is denied.

From the details of an approval request, it is possible to send an email to the employee who requested the approval in order to discuss about the request.

1 From the details of an approval request, click on .

The Send email window opens. The email address of the employee who requested the approval is filled in automatically for the recipient. The email's subject and body are also already filled in with the request's information.

2 Modify the desired information then click Send.

The email is sent to the employee.

From the details of an approval request, click on to view the linked documents.

A preview of the linked documents is displayed in a separate window, on the left of the request's details. The following actions are available from this window:

  • view the different documents using the left and right arrows
  • download the documents
  • zoom in and zoom out on a document
  • rotate the preview to the left or to the right .

Click on to close the preview window.

From the details of an approval request, click on to download the linked documents.

Prerequisite: A report template for the object type to publish must be set up.

1 From the details of an approval request, click on .

A window opens.

2 Select the printing Template in the drop-down list, then choose the printing format.

The formats available depend on the report templates set up from the Desktop Application.

3 Check the Link document option if you want to add the report to the list of linked documents (option not visible if the approval request is for an expense report).
4 Click on Validate.

The object is published and downloaded on your computer.

Important

Approvals cannot be removed for:

  • quotations and quotes that are signed or archived;
  • Validated management objects;
  • purchase invoices with payment authorizations at 100%.

From the details of an approved or of a denied request, click on Remove approval then confirm.