Project financials — Expense approval

Availability

Overview

Enabling expense approval

Below are the steps to enable expense approval:

1. Go to project's Details > Financials > Expenses > Actual tab.
2. Click Expense approval above and on the right of the expense grid.
3. Select an approval workflow type: , , or (see Approval workflow types below).
4. Click + Add approver to add one or more approvers.
5. Click Save.

Expense statuses

Permissions

Permissions associated with expense approval fall into two kinds: 

1. Expense approval access permissions

For a user to be able to enable expense approval for a project, the following permissions are required:

• Access billing information,
• Manage members.

2. Approver's permissions

The project permissions below are required of a user (not necessary a project member) to be able to be an approver:

• Add expenses,
• Edit actual expenses

Approvers

A single list of approvers may be created per project. This set may include one, two or more approvers. If the list is modified, i.e. the order of the approvers is altered, only expenses with the status Waiting for approval will be affected.

To create a list of approvers:

1. Click Expense approval above the grid of expenses on the right.  
2. Select an approval workflow out of three available, e.g. Sequential approval. 
3. Click + Add approver and select an approver from the list. 
4. Repeat step 2 the required number of times.
5. Use drag and drop to change the order of approvers making use of the special handleon the left of an item. 
6. Click Save to finalize the creation of the approvers' list.

Adding an expense 

With expenses approval enabled, the process of adding an expense is the same with a few exceptions:

1. Two new columns — Status and Approvers — will appear in the grid.
2. The Status column will contain one of three statuses.

• Waiting for approval
• Approved
• Rejected

3. The Approvers column will contain the avatars of the approvers in the order they are added to the list of approvers, preceded by an icon showing the type of approval workflow. Example:  

In addition, as approval process proceeds, the avatars will be marked with a green tick

or a red cross-mark .

Approval workflow types

There are three types of approval workflows the person who posts an expense can use to get the expense approved (or rejected). The table below summarizes the three types of approval workflows and related requirements: 

Element	Description	Comments
	With this workflow selected, a single approval from the list of two or more approvers is enough for the expense to be marked Approved.	1. You can add any number of approvals to the list, but when you set the approval type to this one, only one approval is required. However, if you then change the type to another the list can be used with the new one. This is convenient when you use various types of approval for expenses. 2. For an expense to be marked Approved, a single approval is required. 3. For an expense to be marked Rejected, a single rejection is required.
	In this workflow, an expense needs to be approved by all the approvers in any order. In other words, when any of the approvers visits the Expenses tab he or she can approve or reject it any time.	1. With this workflow ON, changing the order of approvers on the list is unavailable. 2. For an expense to be marked Approved, it must be approved by all approvers. 3. For an expense to be marked Rejected, a single rejection is required.
	In this workflow, an expense must be approved in an established order, namely exactly as approvers appear on the approver list. If an approver were to try to approve out of order, an approve/reject button won’t be available.	1. It is possible to ‘shuffle’ the approvers (change the order they appear on the list) up and down the list as and when required, using a special 'handle' on the left for drag-n-drop. The rule here is that all expenses approved or rejected so far remain unchanged; only those pending approval become subject to a new order of approval. 2. For an expense to be marked Approved, it must be approved by all approvers. 3. For an expense to be marked Rejected, a single rejection is required.

Approval process (batch operation)

To approve or reject one or more expenses as a batch operation, please take the following steps:

1. Click the selection mode button at the top of the left-most column.
2. Checkmark the expenses you wish to approve or reject.

3. Click Approve expenses or Reject expenses on the batch operations panel above.

Approval process (single expense)

To approve or reject a single expense:

1. Hover over the expense you wish to approve or reject.
2. Click More actions on the left to open a menu. 
3. Select an action: Approve or Reject.

Cancelling approval/rejection

An approver can rescind his or her approval at any time.

To undo approval or rejection of expense:

1. Hover over the approved expense to be cancelled.
2. Click More actions on the left to open a menu.
3. Select Undo.

As a result, the expense will be set to the status Waiting for approval.

Deleting an approved/rejected expense

An approved/rejected expense can be deleted by an authorized user (who has enough permissions), including the creator and approvers of the expense.

To delete an expense by an approver:

1. Hover over the expense to be deleted.
2. Click More actions on the left to open a menu.
3. Click Delete.

Post-approval editing

If you try to edit an expense after it was approved or rejected, you will get a warning that the expense will be re-assigned for approval with its status being reset to Waiting for approval.

Email notifications

Expense approval email notifications work independently of your email notification preferences (see My settings > Notifications). As a result, you will always be notified of expenses waiting for your approval by email. The message you will receive will look like this:

The message will contain a link to the project or activity where the expenses were added for ease of reference.

Approvers and creators will receive email notifications according to the expense update workflow.

The table below presents the triggers, email recipients and messages received used in the workflow:

Trigger	Recipient	Message
A new expense is created.	IA* & PA* : Any approver on the list. SA* : First approver.	"Expense has been awaiting approval since [date of entry]."
SA : An approver has approved the expense, but there are more approvers in the list.	Next approver on the list.	"Expense has been awaiting approval since [date of entry]."
All approvers have approved the expense. The expense is moved to the Approved status.	Expense creator.	"Expense was approved by [approver**] on [date of approval]."
* IA = initial approval; PA = parallel approval; SA = sequential approval. ** Last approver on the list in case of PA and SA workflows. If IA is on, the first approver's name is indicated.