Approval Workflow Settings
Use Approval Workflows Settings to set up and configure approval workflows for approving different types of records that are processed in Vantagepoint, such as purchase orders and expense reports.
An approval workflow identifies the steps in an approval process, the employees who are assigned to approve a record for each step, and the notification alerts to send for each step to keep the approval process on schedule. You can create simple approval steps or more complex, multi-tiered conditional steps for an approval workflow. For example, you could set up an approval workflow so that purchase orders over a certain monetary amount are routed to different approvers than a purchase order that is under a certain monetary amount. You can set up alerts to be delivered to approvers and submitters by email or delivered to the Vantagepoint Notification Center for each approval step. The alerts let employees know when a record is ready for their review, when it is past due, when it is approved or rejected, and so on.
In in the desktop application, you set up and configure an approval workflow for the following records:
- AP vendor invoices
- Employee absence requests
- Employee expense reports
- General ledger budgets
- Inventory item requests
- Purchasing applications: Purchase Requisitions, Request for Price Quotes, Purchase Orders, Purchase Order Change Orders, and Purchase Order Releases
- Timesheets
You must have the Purchasing application or the Accounting application activated for Approval Workflows to display in the Workflow menu.
The approval workflow settings that you enter in apply at the Vantagepoint system level. If you have multiple companies in Vantagepoint, you create different workflows for each company here. You can also create approval workflows to be used by all or multiple companies.
Note: For billing invoice approvals, you set up the approval workflows in .
Other Configuration for Approval Workflows
Enable Approvals and Assign the Approval Workflows to Use
| Application | Configuration Location |
|---|---|
| Accounts Payable Vendor Invoices | General tab in in the desktop application |
| Absence Requests | |
| Expense Reports | Expense Approvals tab in |
| General Ledger Budgets | |
| Inventory Item Requests | Inventory tab in in the desktop application |
| Purchasing applications: Purchase Requisitions, Request for Price Quotes, Purchase Orders, Purchase Order Change Orders, and Purchase Order Releases | General tab in in the desktop application |
| Timesheets | Time Approvals tab in |
Set Up Approval Roles at the Organization Level
If you use organizations, you can set up approval roles at the organization level and assign an employee to the roles. For example, you may want purchasing records to be approved by an administrator at the organization level in addition to, or instead of, a project manager. In in the desktop application, you create approval roles for all your organizations.
In or in the desktop application, you assign approval roles to your organizations and assign one employee to an approval role. You assign these roles as approvers for approval workflow steps in Approval Workflows Configuration.
Approval Workflows for Billing Invoices
User-Initiated Workflows and Scheduled Workflows Settings
All of the approval workflows that you enter and save in Approval Workflows Settings are copied automatically to User Initiated Workflows and Scheduled Workflows in in the browser application. In these applications you can view the steps in more detail for troubleshooting purposes.
You can also add advanced actions, such as stored procedures, functions, custom methods, and web services, to the approval workflow steps. However, when you do this, if you ever need to edit the workflow steps again in Approval Workflows Settings, you must complete additional steps to prevent the advanced actions from getting out of order and behaving in unexpected ways. For additional information, see the procedure for editing an approval workflow that has advanced actions added to it.