Privilege Needed: Administrator
The Approval Group functionality is an extremely powerful tool in that it streamlines workflow. Each Timesheet or Expense User in Unanet belongs to an Approval Group as setup in the Person Section when creating a user. When a user submits their time at the end of a time period, the control of that timesheet is passed to the first person in that person's Approval Group. As the timesheet gets approved, it continues through all the managers in that Approval Group until everyone has approved that timesheet. At that point, the timesheet is set to Completed. If a timesheet is ever disapproved by any manager, control is always passed back to the owner of the timesheet and the entire approval process must be done again. The Expense Report Approvals are done the same way.
Unanet also offers an E-mail option that sends a customized E-mail message to each manager as they gain control of a timesheet they must approve. A copy of that E-mail message is sent to the owner of the timesheet. E-mail is an option that can be turned off both at the Unanet System level or on an individual basis in their User Profile.
There are three steps needed to create this approval process. The first is creating the Approval Group Name. It's as simple as clicking on ADD under the Approval Group Menu, entering a Group Name, and pressing the Save button.
Once an Approval Group has been created, you must define who the Approvers (managers) are that you want in that group. To define an Approval Group you first must list all the groups. Do this by pressing the LIST option under Approval Groups. You will see a screen similar to the one below (with the Approval Groups you entered)
Next to each Approval Group Name in the Approval Group List, you will see five (5) icons.
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Press to edit and change the Approval Group Name. |
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Press to delete an Approval Group. Inorder to delete an Approval Group, you must first remove all manager from the group and remove any People that are using that approval group to submit either their time and/or expenses. To see each of these, press the following three icons below for this approval group. |
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Press to view or change the Approvers in an Approval Group. This is the list of managers that will approve each expense and/or timesheet in order as they appear in the window from top to bottom. |
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Press to view all the people who submit their timesheets to this Approval Group. These are the Timesheet Submitters. |
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Press to view all the people who submit their expense reports and expense requests to this Approval Group. These are the Expense Submitters. |
Pressing the timesheet icon () will show you all the people who submit their time to
this Approval Group. To add timesheet users to this group, press the edit button
below the list. Next you will see a list of timesheet users followed by their
current approval group in parentheses. And to the right you will see a list of the
current timesheet submitters as shown below. To add people to your approval group,
highlight each person in the left box and press the arrow right button. You can not
remove people from an Approval Group from this screen. That must be done from the Person Page for each person.
Pressing the expense icon () will show you all the people who submit their expenses to
this Approval Group. To add expense users to this group, press the edit button below the
list. Next you will see a list of expense users followed by their current approval
group in parentheses. And to the right you will see a list of the current expense
submitters as shown below. To add people to your approval group, highlight each
person in the left box and press the arrow right button. You can not
remove people from an Approval Group from this screen. That must be done from the Person Page for each person.
If you have purchased Una$ense and are making use of the Dynamic Approval Authority Option, then you will see the amount that each manager has the authority to approve for an entire expense report next to their name. This value is set in the Person Page for each manager and you must have at least one of the following flags turned on in your properties file (unasense.approval.authority.report or unasense.approval.authority.request). (both default to false).
If you are using this option, it is suggested that the approval amounts for each manager be ordered in ascending order (as shown in the example below). There is a parameter called unasense.approval.enforce_order (default is true). If this value is set to true, then it enforces that the list you enter is in ascending order (as shown below), and any managers that are out of order will be forced to approve or disapprove an expense report or request. If the value is set to false, then order is not important and any manager with the appropriate authority will be enough to satisfy the approval and all subsequent managers will be skipped.
(NOTE: If any manager has an approval authority amount in their Person Page of NULL (empty) or an amount less than or equal to $0.00, then that manager will be forced to approve or disapprove regardless of the previous manager's approval authority.
unasense.approval.authority.report - If this value is true in your properties file, then all Expense Reports will be passed through the Dynamic Approval Chain as describe above. If false, then the approval amounts in the manager's Person Page are ignored and every Expense Report must be approved by all managers in the Approval Chain.
unasense.approval.authority.request - If this value is set to true in your properties file, then all Expense Requests for Authorization will be passed through the Dynamic Approval Chain as describe above. If false, then the approval amounts in the manager's Person Page are ignored and every Expense Request must be approved by all managers in the Approval Chain.
Remember: Any manager without an Approval Amount next to their name (or any amount shown less than or equal to $0.00), will always force an approval or disapproval. That manager will never be skipped.
There is a parameter you can add to your unanet.properties file called unanet.approve.self=true (true is the default). Click here to see more details. Setting this flag to true allows users to submit timesheets and expense reports to approval groups on which they are also an approver. That is, they can approve their own Timesheets and Expense Reports. Setting this flag to false prevents this capability.
The individuals in the left window are all the potential Approvers (managers). The individuals in the right window are the approvers assigned to this Approval Group. Highlight each manager and click on the left/right arrow buttons to move highlighted names from window to window.
The order of the
managers in the right window is important! Control of the timesheet or expense
report is passed to the first person in the list and then passed down through the list in
that order. So in the example above, "rebbeca" has final approval authority in this group.
You can change the order by highlighting names in the right window,
and pressing the arrow up and
arrow down icons. (
) to the right of the window.
Note: The administrator can prevent non-managers
from being an alternate
by setting a value in the unanet.properties file called unanet.prevent.nonmanager.be.alternate=yes.
They can also prevent non-employees from becoming an alternate by setting a
value in the unanet.properties
file called unanet.prevent.nonemployee.be.alternate=yes.
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