Switching to an Advanced Approval Workflow

ikim
ikim Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer
edited February 2019 in Advanced Admin Controls

Hi-
We've been using the Submit And Approve Approval Mode so that only one person would approve all of the submitted expense reports. We'd like to try to the Advance Approvals function so that we can have specific managers approve their team's reports. How do I go about doing this? Do I have to set up each person's profile to a specific approver? Do I need to set up a user to be an approver first prior to tagging them to one of their staff? If yes, where can I find instructions to do this? TIA~

Best Answer

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 11 Expensify Team
    edited March 2020 Answer ✓

    Hey there! Once you get the hang of it, Advanced Approval is pretty easy to work with! The most important thing to keep in mind (and this will help with getting the hang of it) is that Advanced Approval is not defined linearly in the Policy Members table. Instead, the approver listed in an employee's Submits to column will be the first approver for reports created by that employee.
    Then, to find out where the report goes after the first approver, you'll actually want to find the first approver's email in the user column and check THEIR Approves to field -- not the submitter's Approves to field.

    This allows you to achieve workflows with multiple tiers of approval for a given report, which would be more difficult to configure if the Policy Members table worked in a linear fashion.

    Here are the definitions of each field:
    Submits to : defines where the report goes when the user listed in the left-most column submits their own report.

    Approves to : defines where the report goes when the user listed in the left-most column approves someone else's report.

    Any user who receives reports for approval but does not have an Approves to designated would be considered the final approver.

    I know this is a bit complicated, so I'm also attaching a couple of useful guides for your review!

    Deep Dive: The Ins and Outs of Advanced Approval

    Deep Dive: Advanced approval detailed example