System design - Expense approval workflow

[llyodfrancis]

Hello,

I have this scenario :

E - employee

DA1 - Default approver

MDA1 - Manager of default approver

AA - Actual approver

MA1 - Manager of Actual approver

The employee submitted an expense report to another approver (AA) for meal of an event. Apparently Actual approver (AA) has no authority limit to approve the expense report. The expectation would be the expense report should route to Manager Approver 1 however the expense report escalated to employee's Manager of default approver (MDA1).

Can you enlighten me the standard system design for this workflow? Is it,

A. 

Expense report >> Actual approver >> Manager Actual approver 

B.

Expense report >> Actual approver >> Manager Defautl Approver

Thank you

[KevinD]

@llyodfrancis this is a custom workflow of your company, not an out of the box workflow from SAP Concur. In looking at what you wrote, I would first ask why you allow employees to choose the approver? 

Personally, I would not use this option if I were setting up a workflow for the exact reason you detailed. The user selected the incorrect approver to send the report to, which then could cause the report to either "get lost" so to speak or take a lot longer to get fully approved than it needed. 

I'm also a little confused by the term "Actual Approver". If someone didn't have the right approval authority, how would they be the Actual Approver? 

It is most common for a workflow to include the user's assigned default approver as the first person to see the report. Even if this person doesn't have a high enough approval level, the report would then go to someone who does have a high enough level. Now, this is all dependent on how the workflow is set up. 

In the scenario you provided, my guess is that it escalated to the Manager of Default Approver because that person had the correct approval limit assigned.  This is totally a guess since I haven't actually looked at the workflow.