How to keep employees from switching policies

dbetz
dbetz Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

Recently we have seen employees either switch into policies on their own or request to switch policies. I'm not sure how they are doing this or what setting is allowing them to do this without a policy admin inviting them to a new policy.

I found this discussion which mentions the "restrict primary policy selection" rule in the domain settings. https://community.expensify.com/discussion/comment/19124#Comment_19124

Is it necessary to set up full domain controls and apply this rule just to keep employees from being able to switch policies on their own? Or is there another way to keep this from happening? It doesn't seem like it should be allowed in the first place...

Thanks

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Best Answer

  • Maddy Lewis
    Maddy Lewis Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 120 Expensify Team
    Answer ✓

    @dbetz - Ah, I see what you're saying. Thanks for clarifying.

    You can prevent employees from joining policies without approval by disabling pre-approve join requests under Settings -> Policies -> Group -> Policy Name -> People. It's the setting right at the top of the page there.

    It looks like several of your policies have that enabled, which is why employees have been able to join other policies without approval.

Answers

  • Maddy Lewis
    Maddy Lewis Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 120 Expensify Team

    Hi @dbetz - So, depending on the use-case, some employees need to be a part of multiple policies to submit their expenses. As an example, an organization might have different rules set up for expenses incurred while on a business trip. So an employee might be a part of two policies - their standard policy and then a travel policy. Of course, that varies from business to business, but I wanted to share an example to illustrate why users are allowed to switch from policy to policy.

    That said, to prevent users from submitting expenses on any other policy besides their default group policy, you would want to verify your company's domain and enforce that domain group rule you mentioned (restrict primary policy selection).

    If you have employees who are on multiple group policies and shouldn't be, please send a message to Concierge with the employees' email addresses so that we can take a closer look at their account configurations.

    Thanks!

  • dbetz
    dbetz Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    Thanks @Maddy Lewis,

    Just a quick clarification - we do in fact add staff to multiple policies if their situation requires it. So I am not talking about the ability of an employee to switch their reports between 2 or more policies that they are already a member of. I am talking about employees adding themselves as members of policies they were never invited to. It almost seems as though they have a screen/dropdown that shows them a list of all of our policies and they can select which one they want to be a member of.

    It messes our whole process up, since I have added all of our staff to the correct policies intentionally, and then someone goes ahead and joins a different policy where their approval workflow has not been configured and submits a report.

    Is there a way to prevent this?

  • dbetz
    dbetz Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    @Maddy Lewis Thank you! I have gone through and disabled this setting on our policies.

    A follow up question: how do employees request access into new policies? I checked a fellow staff member's account but didn't see where someone would request that. Is it something that shows up in their inbox?

    I appreciate that now requests won't be auto-accepted, but I suppose this still leaves the door open for staff members to continue to send requests for the admin's review. I'm just not sure how they do that or where they go to do that.

    Thanks

  • Maddy Lewis
    Maddy Lewis Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 120 Expensify Team

    @dbetz - So, Policy Admins will see policy join requests in their Inbox. You can choose there to Accept or Decline them.

    From an employee's perspective, the user is shown an Inbox task that has a list of group policies that they can request to join while they're onboarding their new Expensify account. This option should really only populate right after an account's created. Once an employee is onboarded/added to a policy, they shouldn't see that inbox task going forward.

  • dbetz
    dbetz Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    Thanks, that is very helpful.

    I just had an employee who has been using the system for several years just send me a request to switch policies this week. Any idea why that would happen or how that is possible?

    Thanks

  • Maddy Lewis
    Maddy Lewis Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 120 Expensify Team

    @dbetz - Since we're getting into specific user accounts now, I'll have you reach out to Concierge to continue troubleshooting.

    Go ahead and start a message with Concierge with the employee in question's email address and ask how they were able to request to join a group policy earlier this week. Please include the name of the policy they requested to join.

    Thanks!

  • Rachael Hopkins
    Rachael Hopkins Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 904 Expensify Team

    Hi @dbetz - quick update here, we have just updated this feature so that you can set a 'preferred policy' on the domain group, but users can still work across multiple policies. Check out this product update post to read how it works.