Expense Approval Workflows for Vision and Touch T&E …€¦ · Expense Approval Workflows for Vision and Touch T&E VI-11 Brent Johnson, Product Director

Expense Approval Workflows for

Vision and Touch T&E

VI-11

Brent Johnson, Product Director

Agenda

2© Deltek, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Approval Workflows Overview

Configuring Expense Approvals

Expense Report Approvals

Expense Line Approval

Touch Expense Approvals

Common Approval Workflow Behaviors

Upgrade Notes

Questions

Approval Workflows Overview


Approval Workflows are user designed workflows for specific applications in Vision. The workflow

defines the approval process, approvers, allowable actions, and alerts for a record. Approval

workflows can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be.

Benefits:

– Flexible Configuration

– Multi step approvals

– Conditional approvals

– Delegations

– Error validations

Applications using approval workflow:

Purchase Requisitions (7.4) Absence Requests (7.5)

Request for Price Quotes (7.4) AP Invoice Approvals (7.5)

Purchase Orders (7.4) General Ledger Budgets (7.5)

Inventory Item Requests (7.4)

Expense Reports and Expense Line Approvals (7.6)

Configuring Expense Approvals

©2016 Deltek, Inc. All Rights Reserved 4

Configuration


Before your employees can begin creating, submitting, and approving employee expenses you must:

– Configure company expense settings

– Configure and enable an approval workflow for employee expenses

Organization General Setup (optional)

Individual Organization Setup (optional)

Approvals Configuration

User Initiated Workflows (informational – no configuration necessary)

Scheduled Workflow (informational – no configuration necessary)

Company Expense Report Configuration

Role Security

Organization General SetupConfiguration > Organization > General


Use Organization General Setup to create approval roles and assign employees to the roles to be

used by the approval engine. Organization approval roles are a handy way to make approval

assignments to employees who have approval responsibilities at an organizational level. The engine

uses a project’s or employee’s organization to identify the employee that should receive the approval

assignment.

Individual Organization SetupConfiguration > Organization > Individual


Use Individual Organization Setup to assign,

change, or delete approval roles and assigned

employees.

Tip: You can assign multiple employees to the

same approval role.

Changing an employee assigned to an approval

role impacts new approval assignments only

Approvals Configuration – General TabConfiguration > Workflow > Approval Workflows


Approval workflows are configured at the

system level. Once configured they can be

used by any company in the database.

Approvals Configuration – General Tab


Only active approval workflows can

be used for employee expenses

Used to schedule past due and

supervisor escalation alerts

Used for project based assignments

at WBS1 or lowest level

Has workflow edit rights, can always

reassign approvals, and is notified

of workflow failures

Add or move assignments

Final approved, but not yet posted

For use when approving multiple

records via List View

Automatically approve subsequent

assignments

Approvals Configuration – General Tab


Expense reports can be unsubmitted if there have not been any approvals

Workflows can be configured for expense reports, expense lines, or both

– Controls whether expense report and expense line approval steps must be completed subsequently or

concurrently

• Expense report approval supersedes expense line approvals

Approvals Configuration – Workflow TabConfiguration > Workflow > Approval Workflows


The workflow tab is used to design the approval process

Approval Steps


The grid is always sorted by the Step column

The assignment type is new for expense approvals. It defines whether

the step is a report or line approval.

The Description column is user defined and can be used to help users

quickly understand why the approval is on that step of the workflow.

Approval Steps


The Workflow State column determines if the record is read-only or editable on that step.

– In Approval – Read-only. The approver can only approve/reject.

– In Progress – Editing allowed. The approver can edit and then approve/reject.

– In Review – Editing allowed. The approver can edit, and then only select Review.

The Review Action is used when the workflow state for the step is set to In review,

otherwise it is disabled.

– Approve – The record advances to the next step

– Restart Approval – The record returns to step 1

The Reject Action controls whether the approver is allowed to reject an expense.

– Assign to Submitter – Approver can reject. If rejected, the record will return to the

employee that owns the expense report

– None – No reject action is provided for the approver.

Assignments


Assigned To – The approval role that will receive the assignment

– Standard & User Defined Employee fields in the employee info center

– Standard & User Defined Employee fields in the project info center

– Organization Approval Role fields

Specific Employees – You can assign an approval step to a specific

employee in addition to or instead of using the Assigned To field.

Who Must Complete

– Any – Only one approval is required to advance to the next step

– All – All must approve before the record can advance to the next step

Days Allotted is used to determine the due date for the step. This field

determines when past due and supervisor escalation alerts are sent. Tip:

This is different that the date configured on the general tab.

Assignment Tips


Approval roles such as the requester’s supervisor and

expense group admins are intended for expense report

assignments.

Approval roles such as project roles are intended for

expense line assignments.

The employee’s org will be used to determine the correct org

approver for expense report assignments.

The project’s org will be used to determine the correct org

approver for expense line assignments

Advancing the Workflow to the Next Step


There are two ways to advance the workflow to subsequent steps

1. The assignee approves their step assignment

2. The step uses conditions, and the condition is not met

Approval Assignment Conditions


Conditions are always evaluated at the beginning of the step.

– If the condition is true, the step will be set and the approval assignment will be made.

– If the condition is false, then the Action if Condition Not Met will be taken

Conditions can be

based on expense

report fields,

employee fields,

project fields, and

user defined

employee and

project fields.

Action if Condition Not Met


Action if Conditions Not Met

– Skip to Next Step – Ignores step and skips to next step

• Cannot be used for last step of the approval workflow

– Approve Step – Step is automatically approved (logged as Approval Admin)

– Assign to Administrator – Step is set and assignment is made to the Approval Admin instead of the Assigned To approval role or specific employee.

– Mark as Final Approved – Remaining steps are ignored and final approval is made by the system (logged as Approval admin)

Completing the Workflow


There are two ways to complete the approval workflow

1. All steps are approved by the assigned approvers

2. A condition is not met, and the action if condition not met is Approve Step or Mark as Final

Approved

The expense report cannot be posted until the approval workflow is complete.

Completed expense approval workflows can be reopened so long as the expense report has not yet

been posted.

Actions


The Actions grid is a child grid of the Steps grid. Each step can have several actions, but only some

may be triggered. For example, a Rejection notification is only triggered if the record is rejected on that

step.

Inserting Actions


Each action includes information regarding when it will be sent

Email and Dashboard Alerts are inserted as separate actions

You can edit the content of the alert by clicking the hyperlink. Each alert has default text.

Actions – Alert Content


Each action is defaulted to be sent to the currently assigned approver, but this can be changed.

Tip: If the reject

action of the step is

configured to “assign

to submitter”, then

also send the alert to

the submitter.

Validate Error Action


You can use validate errors at the start of the workflow (submit) and at the end of each step (approve) to enforce your business rules.

Validate error messages are only displayed to the user if the validate error conditions are true for that step. Use the Description column of the step action to define the error message.

Note: If the step is skipped because the step condition is not met, then the validate error condition will be skipped as well.

Copy an Approval Step to Save Time


If you copy a step, all of the actions will be copied as well.

Tip: If you add

step #

information to

your alerts, then

double check

the alert content

of the copied

alerts to ensure

the right step #

is being

referenced.

User Initiated WorkflowConfiguration > Workflow > User Initiated Workflow


Approvals Configuration writes all of the necessary data to the existing workflow engine. The data is

available to view for trouble shooting purposes.

Advanced Tip: It is possible to insert your own actions for each approval step, but the additional

actions will not be displayed in Approval Workflows configuration.

Scheduled WorkflowConfiguration > Workflow > Scheduled Workflow


Approvals Configuration writes all of the scheduled actions to the “Assignment” scheduled workflow.

The data is available to view for trouble shooting purposes.

The description column concatenates the Approval Name, Step, and Step Description

Enabling Expense ApprovalsConfiguration > Time & Expense > Company Expense


Once an employee expense approval workflow has been configured you enable the workflow in

Company Expense Configuration for each company.

Select which approval workflow should be used.

Each company can use a different approval workflow.

All companies can use the same approval workflow.

Expense line approvals are no longer configured system wide.

Sample Expense Approval Workflows


Three sample approval workflows are included with Vision 7.6

Expense report sample workflows are assigned to the expense group administrators.

– Tip: To avoid workflow failures set the expense administration level to staff for terminated employees.

Expense line sample workflows are assigned to the project managers, principals and project supervisors.

Expense SecurityConfiguration > Security > Roles


Don’t forget to provide your users with

security role access to the expense

applications.

Who Can Access Expenses


There are three types of record access for employee expenses

1. Approvers

• Approvers can view the expense reports and expense

lines for which they have or have had an approval

assignment.

2. Supervisors

• Supervisors can view the expense reports for their

employees.

3. Group/Company/System Expense Administrators

• Administrators can view any expense report that

belongs to an employee within their administration

group(s).

• The administration edit rights only apply to an

expense report that has not been submitted. Once an

expense report has been submitted the workflow

controls who and whether or not it can be edited.

Expense Report Approvals


Expense ReportsTime & Expense > Expense Reports


Expense Reports is an application which allows your employees to log personal and company paid

expenses.

New Expense Report


Select Expense Report from the navigation menu and then select New from the dialog.

Select new from the main toolbar at the top of the application.

Enter Report Name and Date


An employee cannot have two reports with the same report name and date.

Enter Expenses or Import from Credit Card


The credit card feature must be enabled in order to import credit card charges

Save & Submit the Expense Report


Save and Submit the expense report when it is ready for approval.

Employees can unsubmit their expense report if the approval workflow allows it.

Approvals Button


Once the expense report has been submitted the Submit button will disappear and be replaced with the Approvals button.

Employees can unsubmit

Specifically assigned

users can reopen

Assigned approvers

can Approve or Reject

Approval admins and

assigned approvers can

reassign.

Approve/Reject Comments


Clicking approve launches the Approve dialog. The comment is optional.

Clicking reject launches the Reject dialog. The comment is required.

Completing the Expense Report


The workflow is completed when the expense report is final approved.

The expense report cannot be posted until the workflow is complete.

The Progress Tab


The progress tab tracks all assignments, comments, approvals, and the history of the expense report.

The data on this tab is read-only and useful to understand how the expense report record progressed

through the approval workflow.

Finding an Expense Report


Use the Search Lookup to find expense reports for the selected employee

User the Open dialog to find other employees

List View


Expense Reports provides a select employees dialog which doubles as a List View mode for users to

review many records

at once.

When in List View

mode the user can take

action on many records

at the same time.

Expense group admins,

supervisors, and

approvers can view

other employee’s

expense reports.

Expense Line Approvals


Expense Line Conditions

44

© Deltek, Inc. All Rights Reserved - Confidential. These plans represent our current estimates on timing

and functionality and may be subject to future modification.

Tip: When using the

expense line item

approval setting in a

condition be sure to

use Y or N for the

values. This is how

these settings are

stored in the

database.

Multicompany Tip: The

company the expense

line originates from is

the company that

requires its approval.

Expense Line Notifications

45



Tip: Limit the

notifications that

you use for

expense line

approvals if your

employees have

many lines per

expense report.

Expense Line Approval


The project grid has been replaced by a project filter. All projects are selected by default.

Select the show my assignments only checkbox to display your currently assigned line approvals

Use the new column selection dialog to pick and choose which columns should appear in the list

Take action on all expense lines or take action on just the selected expense lines

If the workflow state for the line assignment is in progress then the assigned approver can edit the

description and details of the expense line

Expense Line Status


A new line status

column has been

added to the expense

report.

Displays approved,

rejected, and in

progress icons.

Click the icons to

quickly access each

expense line’s

approval and

assignment history.

Expense Line Progress

48



Touch Expense Approvals



Touch Expenses

Your Touch URL is different than your core Vision URL.

– “/Time” was appended to the end of the URL for Touch

Only Expense Reports can be approved in Touch.

Devices Supported

– iPhones & iPads with iOS 9+

– Android Phones and Tablets with OS 4.1+

– Windows Phones with OS 8.1


Expense Approval Indicator

Number bubbles indicate number of timesheets and expense

reports waiting your approval.

Note: You will only see the Expense Approval menu if you

have expenses to approve or you have approved expenses

in Touch before.


Expense Approval List

Expenses are grouped by status with Submitted at the top.

Note: Approved expenses remain in your list so you can

view them again. If the approval process is not complete,

they will be under Awaiting Final Approval.


Expense Approval List

Enter part of the employee or expense report name to

search for an expense.

Blank out the search text and tap search to view all.


Expense Summary

Navigate between

expense reports by

tapping previous or

next.

Summary Info

Tap line to view

detail.

Tap checkmark to

approve and go to

the next report in

the list.


Expense Summary Menu


Expense Detail

View receipts.

Navigate between

lines.


View Receipt


Approve with Comment


Reject


Expense Report List Menu

Use checkboxes

with menu to email

selected employees

or reassign

approvals


Reassign Approvals

Search and select the

employee to assign the

approval.

Add new assignment adds an

additional approver and keeps

you as an approver as well.

Move assignment gives the

approval to another employee

and removes it from your list.

Common Approval Behaviors


Approver Delegates


Approvers can identify a delegate in User Options.

Both the approver and the delegate will receive the approval assignment.

Delegates are identified in the

Assignments grid on the

progress tab.

Tip: Make sure the delegate

has access rights to the

expense report application

Reassignments


The Reassign action allows users to reassign the approval to another employee.

Reassign is always available to the Approval Administrator in case of workflow failures. Individual

approvers can reassign only if the setting is enabled for the workflow.

The approval remains on the same step when reassigned.

Editing the Workflow


Only the approval administrator can edit the workflow if there are approvals in progress.

If the workflow is edited then all in progress approvals will restart at step 1 when the edits are saved.

Approval step assignees and actions can be edited without restarting the workflow.

Disabling & Restarting the Workflow


If the workflows is disabled and re-enabled then the expense reports will need to be submitted again.

If the workflow is changed then all in progress expense approvals will restart at step 1.

Employees can be alerted via email if errors are encountered when restarting the workflow.

Workflow Failures


Workflow failures occur when the approval engine is unable to make an assignment to an approver.

Example: The step 1 assignment of the expense approval workflow should be made to the

project’s project manager, however the project manager field in the project’s info center record is

blank.

Failed assignments are

routed to the approval

administrator. A workflow

failure email also informs

the approval

administrator of the

failure reason and which

approval role should

have received the

assignment.

Dashboard Alerts


Dashboard alerts, if

configured, allow you to

view and approve

expenses without

needing to navigate

away from the

dashboard.

Tip: Deselect the

“Display summary as

application link” setting

in the dashpart alert

configuration dialog

when setting up alert.

Approvals Review

69©2012 Deltek, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Approvals Review

provides access to any

approval workflow record

in the database.

Clicking an expense

report approval record

link will open the

associated record in a

dialog.

Clicking an expense line

approval record link will

open the line approvals

app in a dialog.

Upgrade Notes



Upgrade Notes

"Deltek strongly recommends that at the time of upgrade, all in progress expense reports

are reviewed, approved and posted prior to upgrading.“

If you were not using approvals:

– No change. Anything that was submitted prior to upgrading should still be submitted after

upgrading.

If you were using approvals:

– Anything that was submitted prior to upgrading will be reset to in-progress during the upgrade

and will need to be submitted again after upgrading.

Please submit a survey for this session via the

mobile app.

Would you like to be invited to the Vision Client Advisory

Council space in Kona?

Send me an email

[email protected]

74

Learn More

Get plugged in

• Join a user group (regional, virtual)

• Interact in Kona – Client Advisory Council

(CAC) and more! ([email protected])

• Join the MVP program

Visit the Vision kiosks in the Expo Hall

Follow the Vision Blog @ http://bit.ly/Vision_Blog

Attend a live VPM, CRM, Resource Planning,

demo or sign up for an upcoming webinar at

Deltek.com

mailto:[email protected]

http://bit.ly/Vision_Blog

Documents

Expense Approval Workflows for Vision and Touch T&E …€¦ · Expense Approval Workflows for Vision and Touch T&E VI-11 Brent Johnson, Product Director