General Tab of Approvals Configuration Form

Use this tab to enter basic configuration information for an approval workflow.

Contents

Identify Approvals Section

Field	Description
Application	Use this drop-down list to select the application for which the approval workflow applies. Options are: Option Application Absence Requests Time & Expense > Absence Requests AP Invoice Approvals Accounting > AP Invoice Approvals Employee Expenses Time & Expense > Expense ReportTime & Expense > Expense Line Approval General Ledger Budgets Accounting > Budgeting > General Ledger Item Requests Inventory > Item Requests Purchase Orders Purchase Requisitions Request for Price Quote Purchase Order Change Order Purchase Order Releases Purchasing After you save a workflow, you cannot change its application. If you need to change the application, you must create a new approval workflow.
Approval Name	Enter a name for the approval workflow. Approval workflow names must be unique.

Options Section

Field	Description
Status	Use the drop-down list to select the status of an approval workflow. Options are: Active — You can use the approval workflow for an application. Inactive — You cannot use the approval workflow for an application. It remains in Vision, and you can make it active again if needed. You can make an approval workflow inactive only if it is not specified as the approval workflow currently being used for an application. Approval workflows are specified to be used for an application: On the General and Inventory tabs in Configuration > Purchasing & Inventory > Company Settings. On the Accounts Payable tab in Configuration > Accounting > Company AP. On the Benefit Accrual Setup tab in Configuration > Accounting > Time Analysis. On the General tab in Configuration > Accounting > Company Settings.
Default Due Date (Number of Days After Creation Date)	Enter the default number of days to use for calculating the due date for an approval workflow. The due date is the date by which everyone who is involved in the approval process must complete their step and the record is approved. Enter the number of days after which a purchasing or inventory record is submitted for approval (the start of the approval process) that the whole approval process must be completed or else it is considered past due. When it is past due and not approved, any scheduled alerts that are configured for it will be sent.
Project Routing Basis	This displays on the form only if you use more than one WBS (work breakdown structure) level. It is not enabled and does not apply when you select Absence Requests or General Ledger Budget in the Application field. Expense Report Lines and Purchasing items can have a cost distribution project assigned to them. You may want to assign the project manager who is associated with a specific WBS level of the cost distribution project as the approver in an approval workflow step. This setting helps Vision determine who the project manager is at a specific WBS level of the cost distribution project. Select the level of the cost distribution project that is assigned to a Purchasing record that you want Vision to look at to determine who the project manager is for approval workflow purposes. Options are: Top Level — This is the WBS1 (project) level of the cost distribution project. Chargeable Level — This is the WBS1 (project), WBS2 (phase), or WBS3 (task) level of the cost distribution project, depending on which WBS level is the lowest level being charged.
Automatically Approve When Most Recent Approver is Same as Current Assignee	Select this option to enable the approval workflow to automatically approve employee expenses when the approver that is currently assigned to approve the expense for an employee is the same approver that previously approved the employee's expense. This option displays if you select Employee Expenses in the Application field.
Approval Administrator	Use the Employee lookup in this field to select one employee to have administrator responsibilities for the approval workflow. The administrator can: Edit workflow steps when there are in-progress approvals. Reassign employees to an approval step when there are approval workflow failures. These failures occur whenever an approval assignment cannot be made to the employee (role) who is specified for an approval step. Reopen a general ledger budget that has been approved if the Allow Employees to Reopen Closed Approval Records check box in Configuration > Workflow > Approval Workflows is selected. The approval administrator must: Be specified as an approver of a step to take approval action for an approval workflow step. Alternatively, an approval administrator can reassign an approval step to themselves, so that they can approve a record for a step. Have security access to the application that they are administering and have access to the Approval Workflows Configuration. If you have multiple companies in Vision: You can enter an employee from any company in this field. The Employee lookup in this field includes employees from all of your companies.
Allow Approvers to Reassign	Select this check box to give approvers the ability to assign an additional employee to the current approval step for a specific record or move the approval assignment from one approver to another employee. You access the Reassign option by clicking the Approvals option on the toolbar of the application's entry form (for example, on the Purchase Requisition form toolbar). On the Change Assignment dialog box that opens when you click Reassign, you can take one of the following actions: Add an additional employee to the approval step assignment. Move the assignment from any employee who is currently assigned to the approval step (including yourself) to another employee. The newly assigned employee has the same abilities as the other approvers for the approval step.
Allow Employees to Reopen Closed Approval Records	Select this check box to give an employee the ability to reopen closed budget approval records. This is usually done when approved budgets need to be revised to reflect new revenue projections. Use the Employee lookup in this field to select one employee, for example, the Chief Financial Officer, to have this ability. When a budget is reopened and modified, it overwrites the previously approved budget. If you want to keep copies of the original approved budget, you can create a copy of the budget, assign it a new name, and have it go through the approval process.
Use Process Server when Number of Approval Records Exceeds	Select this check box when you want to set a limit for the number of records that are run without the process server. If the number of records exceeds the number that is entered in the text box, the process server is used to approve or reject the records.

Expense Options Section

This section displays if you select the Employee Expenses option in the Application field.

Field	Description
Allow Employees to Unsubmit Their Own Expense Report	Select this option to enable expense report owners to select the Unsubmit option from the Approvals drop-down menu. Unsubmitted expense reports will have the Rejected status in the approval workflow. Any applicable notifications will be sent based on the Rejected approval workflow settings. Employees can unsubmit an expense report that is still in the first step of the approval workflow.
Approval Level	From the drop-down list, you select the level at which the expense report is approved in the Expense Report approval workflow process. You can set up the approval process to approve just the expense report (that includes all the line items), approve each line item on a given report, or approve both the report and line items. The possible settings are: Expense Report Expense Line Both Expense Report and Expense Line If you want to change the approval level for an existing workflow, you must first remove the selected assignment type steps from the Approval Steps grid on the Workflow tab. For example: The Approval Level option is currently set to Both Expense Report and Expense Line and the Approval steps grid on the Workflow tab has both assignment types. If you want to change Approval Level to Expense Report, then you must first remove the Expense Line steps from the Approval Steps grid.
Allow Expense Reports and Expense Lines to be on different steps of the workflow at the same time	This option is enabled when you set Approval Level to Both Expense Report and Expense Line. Select this option to allow Expense Line approvals to proceed with the approval workflow steps independently from Expense Report approvals.
Automatically Approve Unfinished Expense Lines when Expense Report is Final Approved	This option is enabled when you select the Allow Expense Reports and Expense Lines to be on different steps of the workflow at the same time option. Select this option to allow Expense Reports approval to approve Expense Line approvals after the Expense Reports are approved. This will allow the approval process to proceed so that the report can be posted even if the assignee is not able to approve an expense line.