Approval Limits

[AmberLee]

When setting up approval limits is it by report total or individual expense?

If my approval limit is $5,000 can I approve a $10k report if none of the individual expenses are over $5k?

[SandraA]

In our system it's by report total.

[Josh]

The approval limit is by report total. I do not believe this can be adjusted.

So if you have a $10,000 report with no individual expenses over $5,000, you can approve it, but it will still go to your default approver for final approval, or prompt you for another approver if your approver does not have a limit exceeding the report total.

You can only grant final approval to reports where your approval limit exceeds the report total.

[arobertson]

Hi Amber,

With Authorised Limits, it is by report total. You need to have a limit higher than the report total for the system to count the report as 'limit approved' when the approver clicks on approve. You should always try and ensure you have people in your organisation high up, with a high limit to ensure even the highest value reports can be approved or you will find reports are not 'limit approved'.

[AmberLee]

Perhaps I'm not understanding the big picture, but this seems flawed. If it's based on report total the employee can just put the expenses on separate reports to get around this. The approval limit is designed (I thought) to ensure upper management was aware of large purchases. Our executives aren't as concerned with a large number of small purchases, especially if it's part of the person's job.

[arobertson]

I totally get what you are saying and this is why Concur has a number of options that help you counter this sort of activity.

1. Cognos reporting - the ability to capture employee(business sector/company/country etc spend over a period of time you can see patterns in this particularly if a user is submitting multiple reports in a short time period. Some companies enforce a 1 report per month internal company policy, but this depends on the client.

2. Audit rules - There are a number of audit rules that help you track employee spend automatically. For instance, lets say I had an per report limit of 500 USD for taxi's and all the employee was doing was splitting that between reports to get by my per report restriction. You could catch / prevent this with an aggregation rule which totals spend based upon expense types within a given period (By month is one possible example)

3. Using additional identifiers to group spending together - Project ID's for instance, you can check how much people over a number of cost centres are spending on  project ID. If an individual or a group of people are using multiple reports to hide their spending, reporting on the project ID they used will also highlight breach of corporate policy.

These a just a few examples of how I would tackle this, what about the others? Do you guys have a best practice you'd like to share?

[AmberLee]

If I can create an audit rule that puts a dollar amount and time frame on an expense type and a certain employee group I should be able to do this on a broader scale.

[PamSciarra]

Be careful with audit rules if you are in a multi-currency situation...audit rules are currency specific (and don't convert in my experience.)

[patilr1982]

Hi Pam,

In my experience, they do convert the currency. Most of the rules set up for my current client use EUR and they work just fine for all currencies.

You have to remember that the conversion will use the exchange rate available in Concur. This can be either OANDA or the one you loaded. It depends on your currency settings.

[patilr1982]

Hi Amber,

In my experience, most clients handle your objective with Audit rules using one of the below options available in the system.

Amount-Daily Total
Amount-Daily Total (multiple expense types)
Amount-Weekly Total
Amount-Weekly Total (multiple expense types)
Amount-Monthly Total
Amount-Monthly Total (multiple expense types)
Amount-Yearly Total
Amount-Yearly Total (multiple expense types)

All of these will calculate totals across expense reports.

[PamSciarra]

By report.  It also converts the currency - so if you have an approval limit in USD but an expense report to approve in EUR, it will convert the value of the expense report and compare to the approval limit.