Categories with rules to route to separate approval

ccrouch

We have specific categories set up with rules to route for approval. Unfortunately, after that approval is completed, the system picks up the advanced approval workflow process. It would be great to have categories with specific rules to include an option to bypass advanced approval workflow.

Sasha Kluger

Hi @ccrouch - thanks for the idea! To make sure I understand what you're asking, would you like certain expenses to only be approved by the category approver, and not by the employee's direct manager set up in the policy People settings? If so, could you please add a specific use case or two and why this is important to you? Thanks!

HeidiB

We have this same question - for example - we are looking at offering a Covid Stipend to employees who have hardship. We want this to route to HR for approval (category approver) but not be forwarded to their manager (the final approver in the workflow). Is this possible?

Lauren Schurr

Thanks for reaching out, @HeidiB - this feature hasn't been implemented, but feel free to vote for the idea on the original post. For now, category approvers function as the first approver and then the rest of the approval workflow is followed.

ccrouch

@HeidiB I was able to create an expense category with rule restrictions. The caveat is the rule is only effective if the expense report has only the specific expense category in question. For example, expense category X is set up with rule restrictions. The user submits an expense report that has reg expense items plus expense category X. The system will route the expense report to the user's first approver and ignore the rule for expense category X. So we've also asked the company to submit expense reports with expense category X by itself and not combine with any other expenses. This has worked well for our company and satisfied what we were looking to accomplish

Nicole Mendonca

@ccrouch ooooh fabulous! Thanks for sharing that hot tip! 🙂

ccrouch

@Nicole Mendonca happy to share!